I have been working with virtual machines and routinely use one to run "linux-only" software. In my experience, they are about 90% or more as efficient as running directly on hard-booted linux hardware. I am volunteering to carry out (some of) this proposal to BO. 1. Create a VM (any linux distro is fine, as far as I am concerned) and install desired cheminformatics apps - first off, all the BO apps. 2. Configure a web server on the VM to provide access to the VM. Users can always open a shell to the VM to run any apps until a web interface is ready. And a full gnome or kde desktop is easily used. 3. Create web apps to provide interfaces to run these QM and other apps. I already have a WebBabel app using JMol to convert files.
I use VMWare, but have also tried VirtualBox. I don't see any meaningful difference between them. VMWare player is free and VirtualBox is freely available. They are easy to install and the BO "product" would be one virtual disk containing linux and all the cheminformatics apps. VMWarePlayer runs fine on windows, but I have not yet tried it on Mac. You could even run the BO linux VM on a linux host! TJ O'Donnell > A long time ago, when live bootable CD we're new and novel, I played > with a Debian (or Ubuntu?) Live CD with Blue Obelisk software. Some of > it was prepackaged, other was not. Users would simply boot from CD and > have a working system with Open Source Cheminformatics software. > > Back then, making a new 'image' took quite some effort, but I believe > nowadays this is much simpler... Perhaps we should start making a Blue > Obelisk Live CD once more? > > Egon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance. See why Intel Parallel Studio got high marks during beta. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev _______________________________________________ Blueobelisk-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/blueobelisk-discuss
