Newsgroups: comp.parallel.pvm
From: wrankin@ee.duke.edu (William T. Rankin)
Subject: Re: PVM on Windows PCs?
Organization: Duke University EE Dept.; Durham, NC
Date: 31 Aug 1994 13:13:58 GMT
Message-ID: <341vmm$rfs@news.duke.edu>


In article <morphy.141.2E63ADAB@alumni.caltech.edu>, Jones M. Murphy, Jr writes:

|> The reason so many people are running Windows is that they can get their jobs 
|> done with the apps available for Windows, quickly and easily.

If that list of apps includes PVM, then this statement is false.

|> Many people find this difficult to understand,

about as difficult to understand as why people want to run distributed
multitasking code on a DOS platform.

I agree that PCs have their place, and a lot of work gets done on PCs that,
for one reason or another could not get done in a workstation environment.
But it definitely goes *both* ways.  A lot of work gets done in workstation
environments that could not be done efficiently on a PC.

Use the right tool for the right job.

|> hence the naive suggestions of "run Linux", 
|> etc. Linux is fine, but it doesn't run many of the most popular business apps. 

Somewhat true (if you discount DOS emulation under Linux).  But that wasn't the
point.   The point is that this person has an entrentched base of PCs that he
wishes to use as a distributed platform.  Linux can co-exist with DOS on the
same drive and can provide a platform to run PVM under.  True, the PC may not
be available to run the latest version of Excel at the time, but if the
original author just needs someway to access the PCs for PVM in the off-hours,
then this is approach has merit.

|> Jones

-bill

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