SuSE 10.3 workstation image

It is time to produce a spec for the next generation of the workstation image. This is to be based on SuSE 10.3 as 11.0 is too new for compiler support. We also considered Ubuntu, but the autoinstall tools for it are not yet good enough.

Supported packages

• Gaussian 03 (64-bit only, access control list)
• Mathematica 6.0.3
• environment modules
• TeXmaker
• Eclipse

Compilers

• Intel 10.0 and up
• Portland 7.1 and 7.2
• NAG
• Pathscale 3.2
• g95 0.91 (March 2008)
• gcc/gfortran 4.2 (part of the OS)

Desktops

• GNOME

Editors

• (g)vim
• emacs
• xemacs

Email clients

• Thunderbird 2.0
• alpine

Libraries

• PDFlib Lite

Maths libraries

• Intel MKL 10.0 and up
• ACML 4.0
• FFTW3 (untuned, part of SuSE)

MPI libraries

• OpenMPI

Plotting

• gnuplot (4.2.2 or newer, not the 4.2.0 that comes with SuSE 10.3. Apparently there's some annoying bug in earlier ones)
• xmgrace

Python modules

• Gary Strangman's python modules
• matplotlib
• numpy
• python-gtk-devel
• Numeric (only because it comes with the OS so it's no effort)

Utilities

• nfswatch (This is for the COs)
• rdesktop
• xf4vnc (or another VNC package which supports the GLX extensions it that proves easier)
• xwrits
• xxdiff

Viewers

• Acrobat Reader
• evince
• ggv
• xpdf

Visualisation

• gOpenMol 3.0
• Molden, probably 4.6
• VMD 1.8.6 (?)
• xmakemol

Web browsers

• Firefox 2.0
• lynx
• w3m

Intending to install but not supported

Items in here that involve lots of work may get dropped if we're short of time. If you rely on any of them, move them up to Supported.

• ical (a very old calendar package)
• Dalton (We're prepared to install the binary we have currently got, which we built on Debian several years ago and which has a 2Gb file size limit- this is trivial. If people want a modern binary then this is serious work- I have already spent some time on this and totally failed to come up with a version that passes the test suite)
• R (I think we accidentally dropped this from 10.2 and no one said anything)

Databases

• Cambridge Structural Database

Desktops

• KDE
• fvwm

Maths libraries

• ATLAS (I am prepared to install the precompiled ATLAS package but cannot tune it for every machine as there is too much variety)
• NAG maths library (as we have a site licence it seems we might as well install it)

Visualisation

• pymol (I'm reserving judgement on this. Previously it wouldn't build with newish gccs but it currently seems very actively maintained)
• xcrsyden (the website has vanished but we have 1.4.1 kicking about)

Packages proposed for dropping

• GAMESS-US (We currently only provide source anyway, and it's very old)
• GAMESS-UK (We currently only provide source anyway, and it's very old)
• Javaview (some sort of Mathematica addon of which I have few details. Suspect it was accidentally dropped in 10.2 anyway)

Compilers

• Intel ifort and icc versions 9.0 and 9.1
• Pathscale 3.1 and earlier (not supported by vendor)
• Portland 7.0 (not supported by vendor)

Email clients

• pine (alpine has superceded pine- it looks the same and supports 8-bit charactersets)

Maths libraries

• Intel MKL 7.2.1 and 9.1

MPI libraries

• LAM MPI

Python

• Biopython (on the grounds that only one person ever asked for it and they have left)
• Scientific Python (ditto)

Utilities

• g3data

Viewers

• xv (no longer part of SuSE)

Visualisation

• Molmol (this is so old it's difficult to compile on modern Linux- do any of you still use it?)