20050706: operating system recommendations

>From: Donna Tucker <address@hidden>
>Organization: University of Kansas
>Keywords: 200507061806.j66I6Djo013141 platforms

Hi Donna,

re:
>My main computer is still running Red Hat 7.3 and I
>have been told I really should upgrade it since this
>old version has too many security flaws.

We agree with this wholeheartedly!

>The question
>is what to upgrade to.  Scientific Linux, which is
>supposed to be an upgraded variant of Red Hat, has
>been recommended to me.  Has this run well with the
>GEMPAK and IDV packages or is there another Linux
>version that seems to be better?  

We are using both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Fedora Core 3
Linux.  All Unidata packages have been successfully run on FC3 here in
the UPC and at user sites.  By the way, Fedora Core is the
freely-available development side of the for-cost RedHat Enterprise WS
distributions.

We will be upgrading our systems to Fedora Core 4 in about a month or
so after we have finished checking it out for features and bugs.  I am
running FC4 on a machine at home, and have found some glitches wrt
OpenOffice.  I have not encountered into any gotchas in running Unidata
applications under FC4.  Then again, I do not use GEMPAK extensively,
so I would not consider GEMPAK as yet being fully supported under FC4.

Cheers,

Tom
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