Is archlinux good for scientists?

rafal · 2006-03-02 15:16:28

Do you know how many scientists use this distribution?
I've installed archlinux in January and up to the last xorg upgrade creating pdf from latex does not work as before. I'm very happy with the arch speed but I don't have so much time to spend several hours and wait a few days for solutions. On the other hand the delays caused by repairing Archinux after an upgrade does not compnsate the seconds of delays caused by slower running of programs. So the speed at the end is only apparent.

I'm curious what are the applications of your Archlinux?
For home desktop and playing with Linux it seems Archlinux is excellent but I doubt that Archlinux is not good as workstation when the PC must work everyday.

Any comments would be appreciated,
thanks in advance

pikass · 2006-03-02 15:29:27

You have to upgrade with caution and of course not if you haven't the time to repair or downgrade your system afterwards. Upgrading without any potential problem is something a rolling release system can't provide, because apps itself are not always backward compatible.

magnum_opus · 2006-03-02 16:06:35

well science wise i use Octave with a bunch of libraries, i ssh into another machine for IDL for number crunching and plotting
SAOimage DS9, xephem (not for real science just looking up things to look for during star parties)

i'm trying to get AIPS, GILDAS and Skycat installed but the first two seem to have aa problem as far as fortran, AIPS with the library and GILDAS just doesn't like to work which i suspect is a fortran problem.
then skycat (which i don't really need it's more so i can make PKGBUILD for my friends) requires TCLx, TKimage and iTCL, all of which give me issues when i run ./configure (syntax problem around line 14005, something about a "(" )

as for how good it is for science, well i dunno, not any better than anything else i suppose.
thing about the fact that upgrades tend to break things, well heck most of the people around here are using 5-6 year old versions of redhat its not like you need to keep on the bleeding edge as far as say KDE or Fluxbox in order to run apps. just don't upgrade your workstation as often.

Dusty · 2006-03-02 16:13:47

One of the develpers, dp, uses Arch for scientific purposes and has included a lot of scientific stuff into extra, I believe. I don't know much about it though. I'm in computer science, which, as we all know, is not a true science at all. ;-)

Dusty

lessthanjake · 2006-03-02 16:51:12

I'm taking a Major in math, so you might call me a scientist Im am regulary using, lam, LaTeX, beamer, AUCTeX, gnuplot, Matlab, Maple. No problem here, except evince sometimes does not display pdf-fonts correct, so if that is your problem I recommend xpdf, its still the best!

lumiwa · 2006-03-02 17:03:51

lessthanjake wrote:

I'm taking a Major in math, so you might call me a scientist Im am regulary using, lam, LaTeX, beamer, AUCTeX, gnuplot, Matlab, Maple. No problem here, except evince sometimes does not display pdf-fonts correct, so if that is your problem I recommend xpdf, its still the best!

I am using Linux ''all my life'' and there are many programs which I use for genetics research which are writen for Unix/Linux and I use almost three months on Arch Linux without problem

Blind · 2006-03-02 20:52:23

I guess you could count me in as a scientist - solar physicist.
Arch is on my private laptop which I used to use for presentations....before xorg7: this is not an Arch problem, but an xorg7 problem AFAIK. Of course stuff breaks on my side - but I guess this is half the fun for me; well, was. No time anymore. I have been more careful recently (although, I just _had_ to get XGL from shadowhand ).
I found it hard though to get Arch so broken that I cannot do anything with it aymore. It is so easily fixed....completely different from Windows XP which took me usually a couple of days to break. I am developing my own parallelized code on my laptop (writing/testing), which is rather computationally demanding. That's why I thought Arch was a good choice...and the more I work with it, the more I appreciate the KISS approach (and because I am just too stupid to get through all this GUI stuff, I just read the Wiki).
If you want a rock solid system, get it to a state you are comfortable with and don't upgrade...my 5c. This is not any different from a particular Debian or SuSe distribution. It might take while to get there, though.
Cheers,
Blind
BTW: Maple/IDL/LaTeX/GSL/LAM/FFTW never a problem here.

big_gie · 2006-03-03 04:26:56

I'm doing my master in physics, and using arch. It is great, but there could be more packages.
I<m using latex for any documents. I once used matlab, but switched to python for its opensourceness. With scipy, numpy and matplotlib, python can really make concurence to matlab. I tryed octave and scilab but I really don't like gnuplot for data display. Matplotlib is really great! (You can find scipy, numpy and matplotlib in aur). For big simulations, I use Intel's Fortran compiler witch works great and is free. I made an pkgbuild for Portland Group (PGI) set of compilers too, but it is really expensive.

Thats it for me...

Snowman · 2006-03-03 05:02:25

Blind wrote:

I guess you could count me in as a scientist - solar physicist.

Me too. 8)

I use fortran (Intel), LaTeX, AUCTeX, gnuplot and GDL (gnudatalanguage)/IDL.

rafal · 2006-03-03 07:58:09

What is your experience, why do you use Intel's fortran instead of g77 or gfortran?

If you want a rock solid system, get it to a state you are comfortable with and don't upgrade...my 5c. This is not any different from a particular Debian or SuSe distribution. It might take while to get there, though.

I think this is generaly the answer to my question. Since in my case it's better to have not so up-to-date software but working software

Thanks for all your opinions and thoughts.

Blind · 2006-03-03 09:02:51

Snowman wrote:

Blind wrote:
I guess you could count me in as a scientist - solar physicist.
Me too. 8)
I use fortran (Intel), LaTeX, AUCTeX, gnuplot and GDL (gnudatalanguage)/IDL.

Nice to hear I was in Vancouver 2 years ago. Beautiful....
Of course, I already looked at your GDL packages in AUR

Cheers,
Blind

big_gie · 2006-03-03 14:06:41

rafal wrote:

What is your experience, why do you use Intel's fortran instead of g77 or gfortran?

For many reasons:
-Free for non-commercial
-Support Fortran 77, 90, 95 and some of 2003. g77 only supports Fortran 77 witch is ugly. gfortran support Fortran 95 (I think) but this was merge in gcc after I began to use Intel's.
-Creates optimized binaries for Intel processors. I didn't do any benchmarks though.

This are my reasons... Anyone having something else?

Snowman · 2006-03-03 21:49:56

Also the Intel fortran compiler has more optimization options, supports parallelization (with OpenMP or MPI) so you can run the apps on supercomputers and has more descritive warning/error messages.

This is the case for a comparision with g77. I haven't check the gfortran man pages yet so it might have more optimisation options.

Moo-Crumpus · 2006-03-03 22:04:07

rafal wrote:

Do you know how many scientists use this distribution?
I've installed archlinux in January and up to the last xorg upgrade creating pdf from latex does not work as before. I'm very happy with the arch speed but I don't have so much time to spend several hours and wait a few days for solutions. On the other hand the delays caused by repairing Archinux after an upgrade does not compnsate the seconds of delays caused by slower running of programs. So the speed at the end is only apparent.
I'm curious what are the applications of your Archlinux?
For home desktop and playing with Linux it seems Archlinux is excellent but I doubt that Archlinux is not good as workstation when the PC must work everyday.
Any comments would be appreciated,
thanks in advance

As long as you can't follow the speed - do pacman -Syu only if you can effort to waste some time.

oliv · 2006-03-03 22:41:18

First I have to say that I'm not a scientist just a student.

I have build some mathematic libraries involving fortran (I just used gfortran). I now use scipy, vtk (A visualisation library) and still need itk. I also build atlas, lapack and other stuff.

I have build every package without messing my system and easily (not counting the usual bugs during compilation :twisted:). Also I found no problems with gfortran but I don't know anything about fortran...

Arch linux build system is painless. But maybe these are already binaries in other distros.

jaboua · 2006-03-03 22:43:34

oliv wrote:

First I have to say that I'm not a scientist just a student.

So am I. I like to poke around with celestia though, and from time to time kalzium (from kdeedu).

jftaylor21 · 2006-03-05 20:48:49

I use latex, lam, octave, <plug>the majority of the geda packages in the aur</plug> (I'm not really sure if they count), and maxima.

I use to use blas, lapack, octaveforge, and several other small packages that I use to maintain in the aur. However, I orphaned them off since I do not have the time/expertise to maintain them now. I just couldn't get gfortran to work nicely with them after the big gcc upgrade. :cry: It would be great if someone would take them over or help me out with getting to work properly. Who knows it might work now since it has been a while since I last tried. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge.....

evdvelde · 2006-03-05 23:04:39

I'm a PhD student in Computer Science (telecom research group). I'm using mostly gnuplot and latex from the Arch repositories. Tools like ns2 or click i have to compile myself, which is quite logical as I alter the source of these tools

Of course, ethereal is sometimes a very important app too...

I switched to Arch in December and I am still very happy. The only difficulty I had till now was the Xorg upgrade which required some changes and gave some troubles due to partially updated servers. Most of the time it is so easy and perfectly ok that it is hard to understand that other distros take so long before upgrading to new stuff like a new KDE release etc.

Legout · 2006-03-06 09:17:34

I´m doing diploma thesis in optimizing organic Photovoltaics. So i´m a "Semi-Scientist" !!

I´m running Arch in my PC and i´m using Latex, maxima, yacas matlab ,labplot ,labview, origin, igor.

My question to all the python,scipy... users. I´m running matlab over ssh and this su*** sometimes. So i´m willing to lern python, scipy, numpy and mathplotlib. Are there any good tutorials?

oliv · 2006-03-06 13:14:23

jftaylor21 wrote:

I just couldn't get gfortran to work nicely with them after the big gcc upgrade. :cry: It would be great if someone would take them over or help me out with getting to work properly. Who knows it might work now since it has been a while since I last tried. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge.....

I used a modified version of your PKGBUILD. It wasn't easy to compile with gfortran since the makefiles aren't designed for. But I was finally came with a solution. I will try it with my fresh install and send it.

Legout wrote:

My question to all the python,scipy... users. I´m running matlab over ssh and this su*** sometimes. So i´m willing to lern python, scipy, numpy and mathplotlib. Are there any good tutorials?

It's hard to find one. Mainly because (it's what I understood) scipy is a rewrite of numpy. If you want to try it, use the svn version (the authors sayed that it's more stable than tagged versions).
I'm also looking for a good tutorial. I find the APIs doc messy.

I heard of a Linux version of Matlab. Does someone use it ?

lessthanjake · 2006-03-06 13:29:21

The free implementation of Matlab(v4 I beleive) is named Octave.

Legout · 2006-03-06 13:31:09

oliv wrote:

I heard of a Linux version of Matlab. Does someone use it ?

I´m using the linux-version of Matlab, but only over ssh. Means, maltlab on the console works fine, without problems. But i can´t start the GUI. I only get blank windows. I think thats because i´m using xorg 7 already and the PC Matlab is installed on uses xorg 6.8.
I hope i´ll get a student-license payed :-D.

Otherwise i´ll use python & Co.

lessthanjake · 2006-03-06 14:21:55

oliv wrote:

I heard of a Linux version of Matlab. Does someone use it ?

lessthanjake wrote:

The free implementation of Matlab(v4 I beleive) is named Octave.

I misunderstood your question! I am using the Matlab Unix/Linux version. No problems here GUI is working flawlessly. I am using v7.1R14, but I have used older releases also, everyone working just fine.

jftaylor21 · 2006-03-06 19:02:01

I've used both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of matlab in linux and they both worked fine. I personally don't think the gui is as pretty as the windows version.

oliv wrote:

I used a modified version of your PKGBUILD. It wasn't easy to compile with gfortran since the makefiles aren't designed for. But I was finally came with a solution. I will try it with my fresh install and send it.

Feel free to adopt them and modify them if you want. I have orphaned them.

Legout · 2006-03-07 10:52:40

Hi guys,

anybody here has a working PKGBUILD for matplotlib?
The one is AUR is offline.

Thanks

Arch Linux

#1 2006-03-02 15:16:28

Is archlinux good for scientists?

#2 2006-03-02 15:29:27

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#3 2006-03-02 16:06:35

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#4 2006-03-02 16:13:47

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#5 2006-03-02 16:51:12

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#6 2006-03-02 17:03:51

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#7 2006-03-02 20:52:23

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#8 2006-03-03 04:26:56

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#9 2006-03-03 05:02:25

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#10 2006-03-03 07:58:09

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#11 2006-03-03 09:02:51

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#12 2006-03-03 14:06:41

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#13 2006-03-03 21:49:56

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#14 2006-03-03 22:04:07

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#15 2006-03-03 22:41:18

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#16 2006-03-03 22:43:34

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#17 2006-03-05 20:48:49

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#18 2006-03-05 23:04:39

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#19 2006-03-06 09:17:34

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#20 2006-03-06 13:14:23

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#21 2006-03-06 13:29:21

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#22 2006-03-06 13:31:09

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#23 2006-03-06 14:21:55

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#24 2006-03-06 19:02:01

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

#25 2006-03-07 10:52:40

Re: Is archlinux good for scientists?

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