[Beowulf] best linux distribution

[Tim Cutts]

On 8 Oct 2007, at 1:51 pm, Seyed Abouzar Najafi Shoshtari wrote:

> Dear beowulf experts,
>
> we are planning to build a beowulf cluster
> with 8 nodes (8xCPUs, Intel 6600 Quadcore 8MB, 8GB RAM )and
> a Dell-Server as the master node (2xCPU Xeon Quad Core 1.6GHz, 4TB  
> Hard, 18GB
> RAM).
>
> Which linux distribution would be ideal for our case?

You are lighting the blue touchpaper.  Basically anything will work.   
There's much less difference between Linux distributions than people  
think.  They basically differ in the way you install packages, and in  
some cases in the locations of configuration files.  But that's about  
it.  Go with whatever distribution you or your admins are already  
familiar with.

Personally, I prefer Debian-derived distributions to Red Hat  
workalikes, but that's just me.  Some people like the Gentoo build-it- 
all-yourself approach.  Some like the Rocks do-all-the-clustering-for- 
me approach.  But they can all do the job.  It depends to a certain  
extent on how much you want (or need) to get your own hands dirty.

Tim


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