Mac or PC (with Linux)?

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I've currently been wanting to get a new laptop. With the kind of work I'm doing, the computer has to have a lot of processing power and lot of RAM to run the kind of scientific programs I need to run. It's been recommended that I should get a mac-book. I know a few colleagues who use Apple Macs because you can compile most of the Linux applications we use on Mac OS X since you get most of the tool. A Mac would be more expensive than a PC though, but I've been told that if I get a PC, I should probably use Scientific Linux rather than Ubuntu like what I've been using. Compared to Ubuntu, Scientific Linux is a bit of a horrible distro because you are lucky if you get one update per year (mostly out of date software) and getting drivers for it is a pain. However, Scientific Linux is optimised for scientific applications and is good at number crunching and I may have some install issues due to wrong versions of GCC and so on if I compile some of those programs on other distros.

What do you guys suggest? Do you think I should get a Mac or a PC? If PC, which one? I've thought of getting an HP Elitebook if I go with a PC but keep in mind that I would like to keep the Windows and dual boot it with Linux (so I can play Starcraft 2 on the Windows partition). Do think I should go with Scientific Linux or should I stick with Ubuntu?

My answer is biest, as at present, I am having great troubles with my Windows laptop.

CHOOSE MAC!

Just because Windows doesn't work doesn't mean you have to turn to a Mac.

GNU/Linux, Ubuntu

Being 1 year 'out of date' also means that the software has some time to settle down and stabilize a bit. I'm not familliar with Scientific Linux, but I am running Debian stable which has a similarly long update cycle. It really isn't much of a problem.

PCs will be cheaper, so if you're just going to slap linux on it, you might as well go with what's cheaper.

If you know what programs you are planning to run, you can check with various distros to find out if they have that in their package system.

Do you want to use a distro you don't like everyday?
Ask your colleagues/ask people using what you use,
and ask them thoroughly every single question you have
Check what they use!

If you need processing power, Apple is not the way to go. You can buy an $800 Acer that will outperform any Macbook Pro under $2000 (and some of Apple's $2000+ laptops as well).

Lots of academics use and like Macs. However, these are people who are buying their computers with grant money rather than their own money, and who generally have relatively limited hardware needs. If you intend to run anything that's really CPU-intensive and price is at all a factor in your decision, then Apple is the wrong choice.


Yeah, that's nonsense. Scientific Linux does not give you much extra benefit, if any at all. Most scientific clusters are probably running Red Hat or CentOS (at least most of the ones I work with have) but any GNU/Linux distro will run fine. GCC is the same everywhere. I have compiled all the standard bioinformatics tools on my own Ubuntu laptop without trouble.

If you want something in the Red Hat family for (mostly imagined) compatibility benefits, you can try Fedora, which unlike the others is actually usable as a desktop system.


I've been looking at this laptop. $800 and it has a quad-core processor? Hells yeah. I would suggest using whatever distro you like. Debian-based distros will have most of the scientific packages you need, and the obscure ones they don't have aren't in Scientific Linux either, so there's really no benefit to using SL if you prefer Ubuntu.

My Mac cost $1200 and has 2 GB RAM and a 169 GB hard drive. My PC cost less than half of that, has twice the RAM, and more than twice the hard drive space. My PC has a high-gloss screen, whereas my Mac has a matte screen that is literally impossible to see in bright sunlight. Mac hardware sucks. The only good excuse for buying a Mac is a burning, overpowering desire to use OS X.

I can recommend a topical cream for that.

Yes,I noticed that the Macbook that I was offered is a lot more expensive than the PC's I looked at.



Although that depends on the applications you want to install. Just over a month ago, I was trying to help a friend/colleague compile and install CLHEP on his machine but kept on getting compile errors. It turned out that the errors were caused by a missing #include statement in one of the source code files. CLHEP compiled fine on earlier versions of GCC because that header file was included by default on older versions but GCC was now tightening up on the C++ standards. Though I think this is more the fault of the developers than GCC because it's something that should of been put in anyway. Scientific Linux usually uses an older version of GCC, although when I look on the internet, I can see that some people have managed to compile those tools on Ubuntu successfully.



Thanks, I'll have to see if I can find that machine in South African stores. I've heard that the Acer Aspire One is a machine that could have pre-installed Linux on it but I'll probably get a Windows one and dual boot it.

I was surprised to find some of the software I needed already in the Ubuntu package repositories. ROOT was there, GEANT 3 was there but CLEP and GEANT 4 was not there. Both CLHEP and GEANT 4 have binaries for Scientific Linux though. So at least some programs developed at CERN have available binaries for Scientific Linux but not other distros. I'd rather use GEANT 4 rather than GEANT 3. Before you ask what the difference is between GEANT 4 and GEANT 3 and why I can't just use the latter, it's because GEANT 4 is a C++ library while the older GEANT 3 is based on Fortran. I haven't learned to program in Fortran and C++ is better for various reasons.

Off-topic question: Have you ever heard of or tried to use ROOT? It was initially created as a program for creating graphs and histograms but what impresses me about it now is that it has an interpreter for C++ code, and C++ is actually a difficult language to write an interpreter for. ROOT doesn't have to only be used for high energy physics applications.

Ubuntu (or any other Debian-based distro) will have tons of available software. For the binaries you mentioned in SL, those should be compatible with Fedora as well, or probably even with Ubuntu (aptitude install alien).


Nope. I'm a bio guy, and I don't actually make a whole lot of graphs anyways. Plus, I don't know C++.

Thanks.