OS Compariton (WAS:Re: rad -n and -N parameters / switches)

It might be possible to get full Radiance going under Windows 7 Ultimate, which has a Unix emulation environment. However, doing this requires development time and the purchase of a copy of Ultimate and possibly a copy of the MS Visual Studio suite as well. To run the resulting package might also require users to buy Ultimate.

So...one more thing we might try, if we had the resources and if there were enough interest.

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Randolph M. Fritz • [email protected]
Environmental Energy Technologies Division • Lawrence Berkeley Labs

On 2011-06-16 12:34:11 -0700, Lars O. Grobe said:

16.06.2011 21:21, Guglielmetti, Robert wrote:

Chris is right, we're veering, so new subject line.

Chris, when I got my first OSX system (2002), the difference between OSX
10.1 and any Linux distro at the time was vast; there simply was no
comparison. I mean, really. No comparison, if we're talking barriers to
entry for Radiance. Today, I would say Ubuntu is pretty close to MacOS,
but still not quite as polished as MacOS. I use Snow Leopard, and then I
have WinXP, Win7, Ubuntu 11.04 VMs available on VMWare Fusion. So far I'm
still willing to pay the Apple tax on my hardware every few years or so.

I think it depends on what you want to do. If you want to integrate e.g. with some architectural CAD, Mac has a lot of software that you will not find in Linux world. If you start scripting, coupling Radiance into other tools (e.g. combining it with visualization software), go into heavy rendering - Linux will be the way to do so without pain. So back in 2002, I was a proud user of a Powerbook, and I had Radiance installed on it. However, I was suffering that I could not get some nice tools working (opendx, comfortable gnuplot, useable latex-environment). And heavy rendering I did using a mosix-cluster with lots (!) of cores, something impossible on other platforms.

So I think it really depends on what your working conditions are. If you are doing enough numerical simulation to have a dedicated machine for it (something with a fast cpu, lots of memory, good cooling, but maybe no sound- and graphics card and probably not even a screen as it will be located far from your workdesk anyhow), that would probably be a highly optimized linux installation. Everything else would just make it complicated, and you would not want to have a CAD installtion on this. If you are running Radiance on your work desk - hey, it is multiplatform, so you can do so whatever os you use.

In this case, Mac users enjoy downloading and copying binaries provided by Greg into their path and adjusting some settings. Linux users are even luckier, they typically will just select Radiance and have all the installation done automatically by their package manager (at least for Debian and Ubuntu, Radiance is part of the distributions). Windows users will suffer, as they first need to choose a way to somehow emulate a unix-like environment (using e.g. cygwin). Still, it works for all of them.

Cheers, Lars.

It would have to be tried, of course. That's why I say we would need resources for it.

Randolph

Ref: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772343.aspx

Hi Randolph,

Great thinking! I like the idea already!

But could you give a bit more information?

> It might be possible to get full Radiance going under Windows 7
> Ultimate, which has a Unix emulation environment.

Are you referring to SFU (Windows Services for Unix, or SUA or Interix, or how its called now)? SFU has an (old) gcc compiler. (See: http://suacommunity.com/SUA.aspx) (other tools are in the warehouse or developer packages).

That's a really useful link. In any event, there's a new version of the SUA in Windows 7. MS claims support for fork()/exec() and fcntl()/F_SETLKW. If these claims for compatibility (and some others) are valid, full Radiance will operate in the Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 SUA. (See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772343.aspx)

> However, doing this
> requires development time and the purchase of a copy of Ultimate and
> possibly a copy of the MS Visual Studio suite as well.

Why would you need MSVC? As far as I know MSVC only compiles win32 (or win64) code, so no Unix, no fork and no NSF.

MS says that MSVC can be used with the SUA, though perhaps is not necessary...or perhaps it is. It would be very hard to get gcc problems fixed in that environment.

Randolph

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On 2011-06-27 12:27:55 -0700, Guy Vaessen said: