Subject: CC software/Linux/Motif?

From: "Gustavo A. Mercier Jr" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 15:02:42 -0500 (EST)

Hi!

I am interested in running CC applications in a P6 box running
Linux with XFree86. Many applications make use of OpenGL and Motif
which I understand are not available through the vanilla XFree86.

I need to find out in what ways to extend (or replace) XFree86
to support the widest range of CC applications, at a reasonable
added cost. For example, 3rd party Xserver software vendors that
include Motif and OpenGl, etc.

Comments in this area are welcomed, particularly updates to
previous discussions on this topic.

I will summarize if there is interest.

Thanks!

-- 
                                      ("`-/")_.-'"``-._
Gustavo A. Mercier,Jr.,MD,PhD         (. . `) -._    )-;-,_() 
Division of Nuclear Medicine          (v_,)'  _  )`-.\  ``-
Dept. of Radiology                    _;- _,-_/ / ((,'
University of Pennsylvania           ((,.-'  ((,/
3400 Spruce St.                  [email-masked]
Philadelphia, PA 19104         215-662-3069/3091 fax: 215-349-5843

---

From: Kenneth Geisshirt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 16:28:49 -0700 (MST)

Hello.

> include Motif and OpenGl, etc.

Well, you can buy Motif and OpenGL. I would guess that both of them cost
about $200 each but I might be wrong. Motif has been ported to Linux/Xfree
by Metrolink and there are at least two companies offering OpenGL. Check
e.g. www.li.org or www.linux.org - they might have links to those
companies.

OpenGL is - as far as I understand - VERY slow. The implementations on
Linux/Xfree are basically just emulators, i.e. they run on top of X11.

Someone is working on a freeware implementation of Motif, but since I have
strong feelings against Motif (looks too much like M$-Windows to me), I
don't know the status of that project.

> previous discussions on this topic.

I tried to compile GAMESS on a Linux box and that was easy - basically
it compiled out-of-the-box. I wasn't extremely excited about the speed
even though the study by Jorgensen et al. (in J. Comput. Chem. this
summer) showed that a Pentium based computer is fast. On the other hand, I
didn't dig into all the options of the compiler.

BTW, GAMESS doesn't require Motif - at least not the computational part
which is normally the primary interest. GAMESS supports parallel
processing, so if you have more than one Linux box, you can run in
parallel. The same is true for DLpoly (and Gromacs?).

My experience with Fortran on Linux is that it works. I have tried both
f2c and g77 but I haven't done any benchmarks (does someone have any info
on that?).

Linux is pretty much a 'standard' U**x, e.g. it follows the POSIX
guidelines and implements SysV and BSD. I have never had any problems
porting programs - well, maybe an old one written in K&R C, but even that
can be solved.

Best wishes
  Kenneth

+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Kenneth Geisshirt                                 Ph.D.-student |
| Department of Life Sciences and Chemistry,  Roskilde University |
| Currently at: University of Colorado at Boulder                 |
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| [email-masked]                 http://virgil.ruc.dk/~kneth/ |
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