[Beowulf] best linux distribution

[Tony Travis]

Robert G. Brown wrote:
> [...]
> It is worth noting that (while yes, up2date sucks and has always sucked)
> yum in FC 7 is a far, far cry from yum in RH 9.  Dependency hell is
> always a bad thing, but very, very few people have experienced it with
> yum since maybe FC 4 or 5, if not earlier.

Fair point - My experience of "yum" was in RH9. As I've mentioned here 
before I crashed and burned trying to upgrade RH9 to FC2. I had better 
experience with Debian, and I wanted to use NEBC's Bio-Linux packages:

	http://envgen.nox.ac.uk/biolinux.html

These are Debian binaries - not the rpm biolinux repository:

	http://www.biolinux.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

This set me off down the Debian/Ubuntu path, which I had already decided 
to explore anyway. I'm running an openMosix kernel (linux-2.4.26-om1) 
under 'biobuntu' (NEBC Bio-Linux + Ubuntu) on our Beowulf:

	http://bioinformatics.rri.sari.ac.uk

We support VNC logins via SSH, and use lots of desktop applications. I 
realise this influences my view about what is the 'best' distribution, 
and why the package manager is so important. This is a small (92 node) 
cluster, not 'BIG' iron like many people on this list run! However, it's 
fairly typical of the sort of DIY cluster the discussion is about...

	Tony.
-- 
Dr. A.J.Travis,                     |  mailto:ajt at rri.sari.ac.uk
Rowett Research Institute,          |    http://www.rri.sari.ac.uk/~ajt
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