Choosing between Mathematica for Windows and Linux
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg36727] Choosing between Mathematica for Windows and Linux
- From: "Sidney Cadot" <cadot at science-and-technology.nl>
- Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2002 02:21:50 -0400 (EDT)
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Hi group, One of these days the company I work for will buy one Mathematica 4.2 license. Now we will have to choose between either the Linux or the Windows versions of the product. Our Linux systems are Debian based, running 2.4.19 kernels, and the KDE-2 window manager. Our Windows systems are running on top of VMWare in Windows XP Professional. In testing using an evaluation version I found that the VMWare/XP version is performing pretty well so that wouldn't be an issue. My main concern (and probably the grounds on which we will base our decision) is the quality of the front-end. The Windows frontend works flawlessly; however, in test-driving earlier versions of Mathematica (3.0 and 4.0) on Linux, I found that the front-end was working a lot less satisfactorily. I didn't spend much time to hunt down the source of the problem, but it is probable that some X key-mapping was wrong making, for example, keyboard shortcuts for 'Copy' and 'Paste' malfunctioning. On the whole, I'd say the Linux front-end simply felt less robust than does the Windows frontend. Can anybody please tell me whether they got the Linux 4.2 Front-end working to full satisfaction? I'd be willing to spend a couple of hours to fix some settings, but only if I'm sure it could be done. The bottom line is that I I would much prefer to run Mathematica on Linux instead of VMWare/Windows, but not if that would mean putting up with a quircky front-end. Best regards, Sidney Cadot