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by bohol 4150 days ago
What do you mean by scientific? There's a lot of Windows only software for research. Mostly for applied things. But also things like data collection. There's even more if you look at development in things like engineering. Even industrial is surisingly much Windows only.
1 comments
semi-extrinsic 4150 days ago
Well, yes, I'll give you that "scientific software" is indeed too broad. If I restrict it to "software developed by teams of scientists working at universities and research labs" it's better.

And yes, lots of data aquisition stuff is Windows only, particularly the stuff that gets sold along instruments. But then, in that category, the trend seems to be requiring a (preferrably air-gapped) PC running XP. I've even seen stuff running only on Win98 still in use, and I've seen software for rheometers that is STILL distributed on 3.5" floppies. And don't get me started on the "needs-crypto-usb-dongle-to-function" stuff - someone should really tell them that the $300k instrument is a sufficient protection against software piracy.

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bohol 4150 days ago
Makes sense. My concern really is if Linux gets any better for these use cases. I think a lot of Linux development is to much software and to little real world "science". You hear a lot how powerful Linux is, but in a lot of cases powerful things are run by XP as you say.

I kind of gave on Linux a couple of years ago when at the same time when Apple had totally neglected the Mac Pro all you could find from the Linux community was how cool the latest 3D effects on the desktop where and chromium was much better than Firefox. Trying instead finding something like say a 2D library more modern than Cairo and there's a deafening silence.

Yes, I'm exaggerating a bit and there is some good developments. Like CERN making waves in electronics by hacking on KiCad. Though I'm sure they would be happier if they could replace Wx with something more modern, which I'm not sure the current alternatives are.

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semi-extrinsic 4149 days ago
From what I gather, Qt has "won" the war, if there was ever such a thing, but GTK and Cairo will not be going away. What are your gripes with Cairo, anyways?

Also, when you start getting into scientific software, very few projects explicitly state "Runs best on Linux" even though that may be the case. If you are looking for examples though, I will give some: PETSc/Elemental/Trilinos/etc Clawpack/PyClaw/OpenFOAM/etc Gromacs/NAMD/HOOMD/Quantum Espresso/etc Julia/Nimrod/etc Paraview/VisIt/VMD/etc OpenMPI/MPICH/MVAPICH/etc ImageJ/Fiji/etc GNU Radio/RTL-SDR/etc

There's tons of it out there!

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