Trying to Decide on a Distro...

R

RottinRob

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Hey everyone!

I'm new to the site and stoked I found it! I can't believe it took me over a year to find it lol!

Anyways, I got this project I'm working on and I'm trying to decide on a distro. I need something that does not have much on it to start as I will likely erase it anyways. I need it to hold an experimental file system and play nice with a heterogeneous architecture. I want to build it with an object store kinda, completely parallel, and super stellar when it comes to accepting some non-standard math libraries like FFT, vectorization, matrices and such. It's gonna have to be a distro that doesn't mind me hacking it apart and asking it to perform like a 5000 core supercomputer. LOL Not really but I have this killer idea that I wanna play with and I got this shiny new system to do it with...I'm starting to feel link Dr. Frankenstein. Bwaaahaaahaaa...

Any ideas would be great and much appreciated!

Hack Ya Later...
 


The distro you choose is likely to be what your personal preferences lean toward. Assuming that you are looking for a server based OS based on some of your requirements. You might want to look at Scientific Linux, or CentOS. In the event that neither of those suit you then try Debian and its derivatives.

The beauty of linux is that there is always choice.
 
I have just recently learned of Scientific Linux, but have yet not been able to take it for a spin. I have been using Ubuntu for some time now, and dont get me wrong, it is a great system! Unfortunately it's not going to handle what I have in mind. And yes, there are many choices in Linux that is what I love about it.
I'm a student at a research university in the fields of software engineering and nanotechnology and I'm not looking to build a new OS, but I do have some very heavy needs and requirements that the systems must have. I'm hoping that someone may provide me with insights into other systems. I have been looking into systems like OpenSFS and the such as they offer many needed qualities. There are soooo many choices!
Thanks for the replies!
 
never heard of Scientific Linux...gonna check it out
 
I am vaguely familiar with a project called Plan 9 From Bell Labs. This in not a Linux system. It may resemble Unix, but it's not a BSD either. I want to emphasize that some UNIX commands are in this but may behave differently and there will be new commands or some missing. It's kind of a Unix fork.

I only mention this, because the OP seems interested in sheer computing power. My understanding of Plan 9 is that systems like it were partly made for Cluster Computing for research projects.

I have dabbled in Plan 9 only enough to install it and connect it to the internet. It is frankly kind of bizarre. It uses a window manager called Rio. I didn't have much luck installing software.

If you try this OS you will have quite a learning curve. There is a Distro of Plan 9 called INFERNO that may also be worth a look.

Plan9bunnysmblack.jpg
 
Inferno is not Plan-9. That is like saying FreeBSD is a Mac distro. Bell Labs made both Plan-9 and Inferno. Inferno is based on ideas and concepts from Plan-9, and Inferno uses some software from Plan-9. However, both are different Unix systems.
 
The best way to choose a distro is to look at their mission statement. Find the mission statement that matches your beliefs and you should be set. Here are some examples:

Arch Linux- keep things simple. Very light OS but you have to do things by hand. It uses a rolling update method.

OpenBSD - security first and great documentation.

CentOS- Free corporate OS. Mirrors Redhat.

I think you should get the idea.
 

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