> but I don't think anyone's yet ready to use it "for real".
Work here, being complex, has a dominantly imaginary component, but the Lab's
Computing Division (er, I guess that would include me) has just added Linux to its
list of officially supported OSes. This is more of a reaction than a leadership
position, as there are several groups already putting together compute farms of
many PCs running Linux for physics analysis -- collider physics is perfect for the
Beowulfian coarse-grained parallel approach, with enormous numbers of modest
events having no (known) interactive effects, much like FoRKmail.
Many physicists here are moving from unix workstations to dual-boot Linux/NT PCs
for their desktops. Cost is the main driver, but cheap games probably doesn't
hurt the cause any. And even though the FP performance of the Intel parts can't
touch an Alpha, the bang for the buck is still enticing.
Cheers,
Wayne
"Now that I have my ``APPLE,'' I comprehend COST ACCOUNTING!!" Zippy the Geek