What is the best Unix like OS for mathematical computation?

[only_huce]

I want to basically have a dedicated machine for running scientific computation programs and be able to access it remotely anywhere using a laptop/netbook. That means I don’t care much about GUIs. I’m used to using Unix and am perfectly fine with doing everything through a command window. At the same time however, I’m not a skilled programmer and want whichever is easiest to set-up and run things on. I also, need the OS to be able to run MATLAB.

So basically I want to find out which is the best OS for creating numerical analysis programs in C/C++/Fortran/MATLAB which leads me to these questions:

• Which one would be the most powerful in regard to numerical analysis and solving complex equations
• Which would be best/run most efficiently on PC hardware?
• Which is the easiest to set-up remote access to?

Also on a slightly related topic, can I just build my own home server for cheap? By cheap I mean a budget under $2,500

 

[SpanishPhysic]

I think the better unix OS is debian, but it's something complicated for using because need knowledge of shell script , so I recommend you to use Ubuntu.

And the server... you can turn your computer in server, there is a lot of software to can do this.

 

[jhae2.718]

I haven't used it myself, but Scientific Linux, which is a joint project of FermiLab and CERN, might fit your needs. It's based on RHEL.

http://www.scientificlinux.org/

Any of the Linuxes should work, though. Not sure about BSDs, with ports it might work.