Linux in Physics

[Moonshine]

Hello,

Question: What Linux distribution do you think is most widely used in physics circles? Is it more widely used than Windows or OS X? Which OS do you prefer?

Any responses are appreciated.

[mgb_phys]

Windows is probably a lot more used, Macs tend to be big in medic/biology.

Linux really took off in astronomy 15years ago when IRAF ported. As soon as you could take all your reduction software with you to the telescope on a laptop and look at data 'live' it was a breakthrough. Then when Pentiums got to be as powerful as Suns we pretty much switched overnight.

I have used SLS, Slackware, Redhat, Mandrake, Suse then Ubuntu - pretty much whatever is the current front runner. Most of the specialist software will build on anything so it doesn't matter.

[waht]

There is also a "scientific linux" flavor. I think they've used it at CERN and other labs.

There was an article in Scientific American where in Sandia (or Brookhaven forgot which) they've loaded one million linux kernels into a supercomputer in order to simulate cyber warfare attacks.

[dE_logics]

^ +1

You just need a large repository. I find lots of scientific software available for Linux.

If you want a large repo of that, use Gentoo, but it's hard to work on it...so you might give Sabayon a try.

Although I might expect more scientific software in scientific Linux, but it uses RPM repos...so no go.

[SirConquer]

Disclaimer: I am not a physicist, but a mere software engineer who enjoys physics and math.

What Linux distribution do you think is most widely used in physics circles?

Scientific Linux (http://www.scientificlinux.org/) is the official OS of Fermilab and CERN. Which is essentially a rebranded RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) with some customizations. CentOS (http://www.centos.org/) is a similar project, though not branded as "scientific", it pretty much does the same thing (minus the "sites" feature of SL) and is more frequently updated.

If you find yourself needing more software options, take a look at Debian (http://www.debian.org/), which has one of the largest open source software repositories.

Which OS do you prefer?

I prefer Mac OS X for workstation/desktop use. I can run and/or compile any Unix software I ever want and use the most organized GUI in the industry at the same time. On servers I prefer the following order: OpenBSD whenever possible, FreeBSD if more software is needed, RHEL/CentOS if virtualization is needed, Debian if both virtualization and more software is needed, Solaris for really large storage and huge data sets. But thats just me...