[Gllug] So, that's the end of that, then

[John Hearns]

On 23 November 2010 13:36, Philip Hands <phil at hands.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Nov 2010 17:03:14 +0000, John Hearns <hearnsj at googlemail.com> wrote:
> ...
>> As someone who manages some hefty SuSE systems, and has been
>> trumpeting how good SuSE is in high performance computing
>> for the last 7 years or so, I expect real soon now soem assurances on
>> the future.
>
> I know I've suggested this a few times over the years, but perhaps now
> is finally the time for SuSE to become a Debian derivative.


Ye may tak ma life, but ye will never tak MA GEEKO!

Seriously though, worth thinking about.

Its all a matter of support, and what are referred to as ISV codes.
In HPC, people run commercial software - LS-DYNA, Fluent, Abaqus etc.
etc. These software licenses cost real money - in fact if you
are a small consultancy probably more than the workstation you're
running it on - so it makes sense to ask your supplier what platform
they
develop on, and what platform they certify, and you purchase similar.

I had a look at the new fancy-schmancy SGI rack with GPU accelerators
- the Prism-XL
http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/prism_xl/
Quite surprised to see that it comes with either RHEL or CentOS



There's also the small matter of Debian's fanatical devotion to the
GPL - you're rather more likely to
get non-free software packaged up for SuSE than Debian.
As a for instance, there is the really nifty 'one click install' for
SuSE - visit a webpage with the particular software
you're after, and one click will get it added to your repository list.
There will be similar for Debian of course.
But what I'm thinking on is Nvidia graphics drivers - dead easy to get
them installed an running on Opensuse desktops
with clear instructions on what you do:
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_drivers

And please (nto having a go at you specifically Phil) let's not have
the traditional howls of "why aren;t you using the completely
free drivers which bearded geeks have knitted from yoghurt and some
spare copper wire, and support via IRC channels"
My answer - I have engineers to support, and a job to hold down.
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