In article <3v3vrr$erv at selway.umt.edu>, demeler at selway.umt.edu (Borries
Demeler) wrote:
> In article <3v3jjc$n0n at nntp3.u.washington.edu>,
> Eli Meir <meir at zoology.washington.edu> wrote:
> >From what I've seen, there's really no way you should be going with a
> >UNIX system for introductory biology courses. Anyone who wants to
> >write intro bio software is going to do it for macs or pc's, because
> >they will sell 100 times as much in those markets (or have 100 times as
> >many people using it if its free). See my Biology Education Software
> >FAQ above for a partial list of good bio education software. Almost
> >all the stuff in there is for macs and pc's, and I have yet to see any
> >introductory level stuff on unix (though I'm sure there is some).
> >
> I would strongly recommend to keep the UNIX option open. Most serious
> research level software is developed for UNIX platforms, which provides
> a much more powerful environment than does Mac, DOS or Windows. Students
> should be trained on the kind of software that is used in a real research
> environment. If you have to make a compromise, select a upper level
> pentium system, you get reasonably good performance and can use DOS/Windows
> and UNIX applications interchangeably. Linux is a very stable UNIX
> platform for PC computers and enjoys the advantage of having many
> research applications ported to it.
>To answer the original question, you _may_ want to browse through the
ecology software at http://nhsbig.inhs.uiuc.edu. This is mostly PC and
Mac based software, but... To address (in part) the above concerns, I
know software and hardware exists enabling Sun Solaris SPARC machines to
run DOS/Windows and Mac apps. Not to push Sun; similar software exists
(to some extent) for other UNIX based platforms.
Robb Diehl (rdiehl at uiuc.edu)
Illinois Natural History Survey
607 E. Peabody Dr.
Champaign, IL 61820
phone: (217) 356-4879
