In the great internet tradition I'll chip in with my opinion even though it doesn't differ substantially from those already stated earlier in the thread.
I'm responsible for a mixed bag of Windows, Linux and Mac boxen used for crystallography and structural electron microscopy. In terms of setting up the infrastructure and getting things working, Linux wins by a mile. It's easy to buy cheap, powerful machines as desktops or servers. There's a wealth of resources to help the sysadmin. The ubiquity of Linux means that if you're trying to do something, there's almost always someone who has done it already and posted about it on a forum or blog. In terms of getting people to use the machines, OS X wins hands down. Putting people in front of linux machines requires more hand-holding on my part, especially for people who are inexperienced or even afraid of computers. This is becoming more of an issue: gone are the days when most crystallographers had a favourite shell and were happy editing scripts. Linux has come on in leaps and bounds but it's still not quite user-friendly enough; even something as simple as copying and pasting still doesn't have a uniform implementation. People familiar with commercial software struggle with the open source equivalents. I won't cover Windows as I have an irrational hatred of it. Having said all that, I too am worried about the way Apple is going. They haven't released a proper Mac Pro upgrade in ages, and seem to be concentrating on making iMacs as wafer thing as possible at the expense of other practical considerations. Their move to using the App Store for everything has concentrated on individual users and hasn't included support for "corporate" IT. Support for NFS and other UNIXy under-the-hood features is changed or dropped seemingly on a whim with no real documentation. Their habit of making every change or new release a big surprise makes it difficult to plan for the future. I'm glad I've got that off my chest. Now I can do something productive. Chris -- Dr Chris Richardson :: Sysadmin, structural biology, icr.ac.uk The Institute of Cancer Research: Royal Cancer Hospital, a charitable Company Limited by Guarantee, Registered in England under Company No. 534147 with its Registered Office at 123 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 3RP. This e-mail message is confidential and for use by the addressee only. If the message is received by anyone other than the addressee, please return the message to the sender by replying to it and then delete the message from your computer and network.
