Tim Cutts (tjrc1 at mole.bio.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
: In article <m0w7dGj-0004Q6C at uctmail2.uct.ac.za>,
: Ed Rybicki <ed at molbiol.uct.ac.za> wrote:
: > I could, of course, be persuaded otherwise if someone were to solve
: > our X-Windows problem...?
: If you plan to spend a *lot* of time in X, you can do a lot worse than
: installing Linux on your PCs as well as their usual operating system.
: I use a Linux box all the time to access our main SGI machine running
: GCG, and reboot the machine into NT if I need to do some
: word-processing or something.
: If you need to run X software at the same time as Windows software,
: Vista eXceed is OK, in my experience, although it costs $$$ of
: course. I understand that the new version of OS/2 now includes an X
: server as standard, and even if it doesn't, XFree86 (the free X server
: developed for Linux and other free UNIX clones for PCs) has now been
: ported to OS/2, so you can get a high quality X server cheaply that
: way.
I would agree with Tim on this, that there are several choices for X
servers. There are several issues regarding whether GCG should still be
trying to push an X solution for a graphical interface, but actually
getting X to work isn't one of those issues. I have set up many PC's for
GCG X access using a variety of propietory packages, including the
excellent hummingbird Exceed/W (which in my view is the best) and the
XVision software, which used to be pretty awful but now runs exceptionally
well. Also, why not try downloading the demo software from the white pines
web site of their X server for both Mac or windows (I think it's called
exodus, but my failing memory has let me down yet again). Also, for
graphical interface access to GCG remember that Don Gilbert has produced
his SeqPup software that runs on many platforms, and sends 'jobs'
out to a GCG box running his BOP daemon, returning the results to the
Mac/PC/UNIX client automatically. I have personally found this very useful
and infinately more elegant than dealing with X.
