Comment Linux is free (Score 1) 30
At the risk of overgeneralizing from my limited
experience, I think we can expect to see this "creep" accelerate to a sprint, at least in some places.
I work in a modestly sized Astronomy department and have noticed an increasing Linux buzz around the donut pile. Not that everybody isn't already running Linux on their boxes at home, but it is increasingly seen as an attractive alternative to Sun and HP workstations in the office. I wonder if workstations for scientists will soon disappear in favor of PC's running Linux. The image reduction software packages have all been ported, and everyone is completely comfortable with UNIX, so their really is no barrier to the transition. Particularly when, as one professor told me, you can easily buy 5 completely decked out PC/Linux systems for the cost of a workstation. How hard is that computation?
experience, I think we can expect to see this "creep" accelerate to a sprint, at least in some places.
I work in a modestly sized Astronomy department and have noticed an increasing Linux buzz around the donut pile. Not that everybody isn't already running Linux on their boxes at home, but it is increasingly seen as an attractive alternative to Sun and HP workstations in the office. I wonder if workstations for scientists will soon disappear in favor of PC's running Linux. The image reduction software packages have all been ported, and everyone is completely comfortable with UNIX, so their really is no barrier to the transition. Particularly when, as one professor told me, you can easily buy 5 completely decked out PC/Linux systems for the cost of a workstation. How hard is that computation?
