If you're comfortable using Linux and have a choice in the matter, I would recommend avoiding using Julia on Windows if you can, especially for production purposes. Jameson, Isaiah, myself and others have put in a lot of effort to try to make things work, but there remains a lot of work to do across the package ecosystem (which was the point behind my JuliaCon talk), and there are a number of persistent bugs and usability issues that remain unsolved for a variety of reasons.
On Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at 2:07:16 AM UTC-7, Eric Forgy wrote: > > I am about to do some experiments running Julia from an Azure VM. The > first decision to make is "Which VM?" Azure has a "Quick Create" option for > creating VM's and the options are: > > - Windows Server > - Ubuntu Server > - OpenLogic > - Oracle Linux > - CoreOS > - SUSE Linux Enterprise Server > > I presume Azure has a good reason to shortlist these VM's (and shortlist > them in that order) so unless there is a good reason to deviate, I'll > probably choose one of the above. > > If I look at the Julia downloads <http://julialang.org/downloads/> page, > I see the following selections: > > - Windows > - Mac OS X > - Ubuntu > - Fedora/RHEL/CentOS/SL > - Generic Linux > > I presume you guys have a good reason to shortlist these OSs (but not sure > if the order is significant). I am agnostic about which OS to use, but I > prefer to use one that has the best Julia support and will cause the least > headaches, which presumably might be related to the OS most Julia > developers are using. > > If I could, I would probably prefer to run Julia on a Windows VM, but I > get the impression Windows has the fewest Julia developers working on it > (see Stephen's comment here > <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/julia-users/zgoqVYyPaIk/lfRmeROpI7YJ>) > so I predict there to be some pain points. Is that impression misguided? > Any thoughts? > > If not Windows, comparing the above two lists, I'd be inclined to consider > using Ubuntu. > > My use case is ultimately going to be distributed computing in the cloud > (Azure) driven by a web app (ASP.NET MVC) with communication via REST > and/or ZMQ. > > In a nutshell: > > 1. I have a slight preference for a Windows VM, but could be dissuaded > if there is some pain to be expected. Is there? > 2. If not Windows, it seems Ubuntu VM is the next likely candidate > with apparently solid support in the Julia community. Is that true? > 3. Any other recommendation better than the above two? > > Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks! >
