[Platforms #HAI-637029]: OS Recommendation

Hi George,

re:
> We are looking to update the operating system in the meteorology/climatology
> lab at UNL. We're running CentOS 5.5 on both 32-bit and 64-bit computers.
> During the summer is the best time for this maintenance and we've considered a
> few options:
> 
> * Updating to CentOS 5.6
> * Switching to Scientific Linux
> * Switching back to Fedora
> 
> Do you have any recommendations on what distributions of Linux work well with
> GEMPAK and IDV?

We use Fedora here at the UPC, but this requires that we update the OS as
Fedora moves to new distributions.  CentOS seems to be a reasonable and
cheap compromise and it fits with what we do since it and Fedora are
RedHat variants.  Given that a growing number of community members are
moving from distributions like Fedora to CentOS, I think that staying with
CentOS makes sense.  On top of that, AWIPS-II is built to run on RedHat
Enterprise 5.5 and will stay with RedHat Enterprise in the future.  Given
that CentOS is a free version of RedHat Enterprise, it would be wise to
stick with it if you have any desire to run AWIPS-II in the future.

re:
> We prefer an OS that has a large user base or a paid team to
> maintain the distribution. We also prefer a relatively stable system, as
> opposed to running the newest packages (meaning we won't be running FreeBSD-
> Unstable anytime soon :-)). Do you have any experience or feedback about these
> distributions or any recommendations?

See above.

re:
> We're seriously considering running
> Scientific Linux, but haven't been able to find much feedback about running
> GEMPAK and IDV on it.

We have no experience in-house with Scientific Linux.  The only feedback we
have gotten about Scientific Linux is from a site (UWisconsin) that ran
into problems with running the LDM with a large queue (>=18 GB) under
Scientific Linux (the LDM would hang after about an hour).  After the
site loaded CentOS on the same hardware, the LDM problem went away.
Is this enough to negate use of Scientific Linux?  Probably not, but it
is an interesting data point...

Cheers,

Tom
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Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: HAI-637029
Department: Support Platforms
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed