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Dear Jon, I could not resist to reply your question about the statistics. According to last month statistics the windows version of CCP4 packages is around 50% of the download made from our server it comes before the various linuxes and then comes Mac and Irix. So even windows might not be the most wonderful operating system it is still the first platform used by our users. Since I am the "windows guy" of CCP4 I can make a slight correction, concerning moslfm which thanks to his new interface (already publicly available as Geoff announced in the end of march) is more likely to be portable to windows in the future, mainly because its new interface is relying on IncrTcl-Tk and not using the X-libraries which are not portable. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jon Wright Sent: 19 April 2006 18:45 To: Sergei Strelkov Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ccp4bb]: Choice of OS platform for (bio)crystallographic computing *** For details on how to be removed from this list visit the *** *** CCP4 home page http://www.ccp4.ac.uk *** > It does seem that there are no Windows versions of several important > crystallographic programs/packages but I may be not up to date -- does > anyone have a list of those that are available? A list of what is unavailable for windows would be more interesting, and shorter?? So far I missed: arp/warp sharp solve/resolve mosflm (didn't find a binary exe, have seen screenshots under cygwin/x) whatcheck (didn't find a binary exe, thought I saw someone with a windows version once) ... which perhaps shows my main interest is not PX. If you spend most of your time working with structures in phaser/molrep/shelx/coot/O/refmac then they're all ported already. Anyone arguing for OpenSource must realise that by giving away their source code they risk their program being ported to windows ;-) What programs do you miss? Are they open source? Many in the small molecule and powder communities migrated when windows went 32bit and the 640 K limit disappeared (eg: ~11 years ago with windows 95/nt versus dos+windows 3.1). Programs which didn't make the transition mostly died out, hint hint. A motivation for choosing unix systems for PX was 3D graphics and faster computers with bigger memories, but nowadays the masses have caught up and it is not so clear what is to be gained from a technical point of view. The lack of extensive documentation on the web for "setting things up" on windows might mean that most people figured it out themselves so easily that there was no motivation to help others? As a developer, once you've ported to one windows box you've very likely ported to most of the windows boxes in existence. It is strange that no one has dared to speak up for windows. A quote from Eric Raymond a couple of years ago: "The biggest obstacle between open-source software and world domination is not Microsoft, it's our own endemic cluelessness about how to design software that won't make nontechnical users run screaming". Read more at http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html. While I can happily get work done on linux/mac/vms, I was recently very upset to find out that windows is the only OS which talks to a shiny sony mp3 player, but that is a different religous war. As much as you might hate windows (or sony) it is unlikely to go away anytime soon. Coot and all of the parts of ccp4 that I tried appear to work great on a windows laptop, as does shelx. Many thanks to all those who have taken the time to support windows! I wonder what the download statistics are for ccp4 on windows versus other versions? Jon
