Difference between revisions of "SuSE 10.1 workstation image"

Latest revision as of 13:22, 6 February 2007

We need a new workstation image as SuSE 9.3 won't be supported for very much longer (ends Easter 2007). In order that I don't have to do this this again in six months I'm going for SuSE 10.1 rather than 10.0. I have considered Debian but am still not totally convinced about the improvement in the release cycle. Ubuntu needs too much messing about to make it work the way I want it to. Redhat isn't free (as in beer).

Going to SuSE 10.1 is going to involve changes and compromise as usual.

Packages to be dropped

Unless of course someone comes up with a good reason not to

molmol - Does anyone use this? It's old code and so a lot of work to maintain
GAMESS-US - I'll keep the source hanging about, but does anyone need the compiled version?
GAMESS-UK - ditto
Pathscale - nothing can make me install this, it's not currently supported on 10.1 by the vendor. I expect this will change in time though, at which point I'll install it
Mathematica 5.1 - We have 5.2 so no need for 5.1?
PGI 6.0 and below - In fact only 6.2 is supported on SuSE 10.1, but 6.1 seems to work OK so far
Intel ifort 8.x
Intel icc 8.x

Packages I am definitely installing

There's a list of these as I do them at http://www-theor.ch.cam.ac.uk/IT/workstations/suse-10.1/software.html , with links to their documentation.

Acrobat Reader 7 (PDF viewer) DONE
ATLAS (maths library) DONE
catdcd DONE
DALTON DONE
Firefox (web browser) DONE
Epiphany (web browser) DONE
GNOME desktop DONE
gfortran (free Fortran 95 compiler) DONE
gv (Postscript viewer) DONE
k3b (CD/DVD burning) DONE
Numeric Python (maths modules for Python) DONE
OpenOffice.org (Office suite) DONE
OpenSSH (SSH client) DONE
Pan (news client) DONE
Pine (mail/news client) DONE
rasmol (molecular visualisation) DONE
TeX/LaTeX (document preparation system) DONE
Thunderbird (mail/news client) DONE
xmgrace (graphing package) DONE
xpdf (PDF viewer) DONE
xv (image viewer) DONE
Intel MKL 7.2.1 DONE
Gary Strangman's Python utilities DONE
Mathematica 5.2 DONE
NAG Fortran (f95) 5.1 DONE
numarray DONE
PGI Server (Fortran and C compilers) 6.2 DONE
pymol DONE
rdesktop DONE
Scientific Python DONE
VMD DONE
xmakemol DONE
xwrits DONE
xxdiff DONE
The GIMP DONE
Inkscape DONE
g95 DONE
gnuplot
Imagemagick
Intel compilers
Intel debuggers
Octave
Xemacs

Good things about the 10.1 image

security updates until May 2008, possibly longer
working automounter
much better removable media handling (in fact this is debatable: it only works for GNOME and KDE but it works better for those than the old one did)
gcc 4 and gfortran part of image
preconfigured lookup support in mail clients (ie a University-wide email addressbook)
module system handles libraries intelligently: no more -L and -I needed in most cases, but full control available if needed
intending to have a 64 bit version as well as 32
modules dependencies far more logical

Problems with 10.1 image

no gcc3 package, so some stuff won't currently compile. They supply g77 out of gcc 3 so why not gcc itself?
Pathscale don't support it yet
removable media handling broken for fvwm users

Proposed new packages

You can add things here and I'll transfer them to the other list as I decide how I'm going to implement them.

R (Could be installed from source)
ipython (please?)
enthought (python package) looks really nice.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 We need a new workstation image as SuSE 9.3 won't be supported for very much longer (ends Easter 2007). In order that I don't have to do this this again in six months I'm going for SuSE 10.1 rather than 10.0. I have considered Debian but am still not totally convinced about the improvement in the release cycle. Ubuntu needs too much messing about to make it work the way I want it to. Redhat isn't free (as in beer).
-Needless to say going to SuSE 10.1 is going to involve changes and compromise.
+Going to SuSE 10.1 is going to involve changes and compromise as usual.
+== Packages to be dropped ==
-Good things about 10.1
+Unless of course someone comes up with a good reason not to
-* security updates until May 2008, may be able to stretch this further by judicious use of rpms from SLES 10.
+* molmol - Does anyone use this? It's old code and so a lot of work to maintain
+* GAMESS-US - I'll keep the source hanging about, but does anyone need the compiled version?
+* GAMESS-UK - ditto
+* Pathscale - nothing can make me install this, it's not currently supported on 10.1 by the vendor. I expect this will change in time though, at which point I'll install it
+* Mathematica 5.1 - We have 5.2 so no need for 5.1?
+* PGI 6.0 and below - In fact only 6.2 is supported on SuSE 10.1, but 6.1 seems to work OK so far
+* Intel ifort 8.x
+* Intel icc 8.x
+== Packages I am definitely installing ==
+There's a list of these as I do them at http://www-theor.ch.cam.ac.uk/IT/workstations/suse-10.1/software.html , with links to their documentation.
+* Acrobat Reader 7 (PDF viewer) DONE
+* ATLAS (maths library) DONE
+* catdcd DONE
+* DALTON DONE
+* Firefox (web browser) DONE
+* Epiphany (web browser) DONE
+* GNOME desktop DONE
+* gfortran (free Fortran 95 compiler) DONE
+* gv (Postscript viewer) DONE
+* k3b (CD/DVD burning) DONE
+* Numeric Python (maths modules for Python) DONE
+* OpenOffice.org (Office suite) DONE
+* OpenSSH (SSH client) DONE
+* Pan (news client) DONE
+* Pine (mail/news client) DONE
+* rasmol (molecular visualisation) DONE
+* TeX/LaTeX (document preparation system) DONE
+* Thunderbird (mail/news client) DONE
+* xmgrace (graphing package) DONE
+* xpdf (PDF viewer) DONE
+* xv (image viewer) DONE
+* Intel MKL 7.2.1 DONE
+* Gary Strangman's Python utilities DONE
+* Mathematica 5.2 DONE
+* NAG Fortran (f95) 5.1 DONE
+* numarray DONE
+* PGI Server (Fortran and C compilers) 6.2 DONE
+* pymol DONE
+* rdesktop DONE
+* Scientific Python DONE
+* VMD DONE
+* xmakemol DONE
+* xwrits DONE
+* xxdiff DONE
+* The GIMP DONE
+* Inkscape DONE
+* g95 DONE
+* gnuplot
+* Imagemagick
+* Intel compilers
+* Intel debuggers
+* Octave
+* Xemacs
+== Good things about the 10.1 image ==
+* security updates until May 2008, possibly longer
 * working automounter
-* much better removable media handling (in fact this is debatable: it only works for GNOME and KDE. Those of us who like fvwm will finally have to enter the 21st century)
+* much better removable media handling (in fact this is debatable: it only works for GNOME and KDE but it works better for those than the old one did)
+* gcc 4 and gfortran part of image
-* allegedly new and improved update mechanism (in fact: buggy and totally unreliable new update mechanism, but I live in hope of fixes and anyway it's the sysadmin's problem not the user's)
+* preconfigured lookup support in mail clients (ie a University-wide email addressbook)
-* gcc 4 and gfortran
+* module system handles libraries intelligently: no more -L and -I needed in most cases, but full control available if needed
+* intending to have a 64 bit version as well as 32
+* modules dependencies far more logical
+== Problems with 10.1 image ==
-Problems with 10.1 that I can't currently fix (I'm not going to bore everyone with the list of bad things I've fixed)
-* no gcc3 package, so some stuff won't work. They supply g77 out of gcc 3 so why not gcc itself?
+* no gcc3 package, so some stuff won't currently compile. They supply g77 out of gcc 3 so why not gcc itself?
 * Pathscale don't support it yet
+* removable media handling broken for fvwm users
+== Proposed new packages ==
+You can add things here and I'll transfer them to the other list as I decide how I'm going to implement them.
+* R (Could be installed from source)
+* ipython (please?)
+* enthought (python package) looks really nice.