On Tue, 17 Jul 2007, Michael Hannon wrote:

> Hi, folks.  I'm getting some inquiries about Ubuntu these days.  The
> following, from one of our postdocs, is fairly typical:
>
> > I'm not usually one to proselytize, but the availability of scientific
> > applications on "Scientific Linux" is just embarrassing compared to
> > Debian/Ubuntu.  Just some of the scientific apps I can apt-get that
> > aren't available on SL: axiom, singular, root, grace.
>
> I am personally happy and comfortable with SL, but I *can* see an
> advantage to having Avogadro's number of packages available for quick
> and easy installation.
>
> I'd like to know how others are dealing with this.  Is anybody using
> Ubuntu clients with SL servers for instance?  Any other words of wisdom
> on this topic?
>

We have asked may times for volunteers to help us put all of those 
scientific applications into SL.  The only thing we ever get is "please 
put in so.and.so".  We do not get "Yes, I will help you put in these 
scientific applications".

We are only 2 people.  There are many who are doing debian.

Plus we have not had anyone request "axiom, singular or grace".  We have 
asked the "root" developers to provide a rpm of "root" but I have not 
seen it yet.  Note that it is different to make a rpm,  one has to tell us 
that it exists so we can put it in.

There maybe some advance on this in the near future ,  depends on if a 
project that we are working on actually moves forward.

-connie


  > Thanks. >
> 					- Mike
>