[SciPy-User] Ubuntu vs Fedora for scientific work?

[Gökhan Sever]

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Dharhas Pothina <
Dharhas.Pothina at twdb.state.tx.us> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> This is slightly off topic but I felt that this lists membership would have
> good input on this question. I am presently running fedora 8 on my main
> workstation and it is getting a bit long in the tooth. Back when I set this
> machine up, RHEL was too much of a pain to use because scientific packages
> were always extremely outdated and difficult to install. Ubuntu was nice to
> use at home but installing scientific packages like the Intel Fortran
> compiler etc was complicated (not impossible, just more work than I wanted).
> So I went with Fedora which has worked pretty well so far.
>
> Recently, I've noticed that a lot of scientific packages now have ubuntu
> repositories and even the intel compiler has an ubuntu option. So I'm trying
> to decide whether to go with Fedora 11 or Ubuntu Jaunty.
>
> I'm not trying to start a flame war but I'm interested in what people's
> experience has been.
>
> thanks,
>
> - dharhas
>
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Hey Dharhas,

Your message seemingly delivered after 7 days :) There might be an issue
with your mail server.

I started my Linux life with Red Hat Enterprise 5. Right after I realized
the immensity of open-source world I quickly switched to Fedora 10. After 5
months of journey with FC10 a weeks ago I upgrade to FC11. Yes, I know it is
like a never ending quest.

Even though the very bizarre errors -like the ones mostly associated with
display drivers; I haven't seen any Python related tool not working in
Fedora 11. FC10 was the same as well.

I use repositories to install very essential tools, like C and Fortran
compilers, and installation of critical libraries. However when it comes to
Python, I usually access the codes from their repositories and make a manual
installation. Once I full-fill dependency requirements they nicely build and
install themselves.

Probably, I will keep working with Fedora until it gives me a very big
headache or if they stop releasing new versions.

To me, it would be better to stay on Fedora line since you have already had
experience with a Fedora. However, Ubuntu is a free OS too, you might
download the ISO and burn into your flash drive and give it a test drive
--installations are super easy.

Another funny note to add, when you settled with the OS decision, you will
find yourself trying to decide whether to use matplotlib or chaco, or which
backend should you use wx or Qt. Sometimes having too many options can cause
confusions as in these cases :)

-- 
Gökhan
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