Chris,
It looks like corporate ITs are staying with Windows for now. We run WinXP 32 Pro-E with Solaris 9 PDMLink 8. The boxes are IT cheap DELLs which are marginal at best. I am pushing for SUN Ultra 40 workstations with Opteron AMD 64 chips. This way I can go either way Solaris 10 or Win.
In addition Windows server consistently fails IT cyber security scans, so Win Server will not be in the future. This direction will be RH Linux or Solaris 10 Sparc or AMD.
For my home company I ambuilding Opteron based system(s), and will run SUSE Linux or RH with VM for either Solaris or Win, or Solaris as base OS. HaverunWF and WF3 on SUSE Linux 64 without problem. Again Intralink 9.1 will go on RH Linux or Solaris. For a small company, I am steering away from Windows. I see no reason to play that game, except where necessary.
I would encourage others to prod PTC to keep Linux in the ProE future.Our IT people desire Linux machines for security, and shy away from Windows servers.
In Reply to Chris Glenister:
Many thanks to all of you who replied to my questions. In Summary it seems that the days of true Unix workstations with RISC processors are numbered. These are being phased out and replaced with Intel/AMD 64bit processors able to support Linux/Windows etc. In addition to this PTC seem to be closing the door slowly on the UNIX/Linux route, with no longterm support commitment beyond WF4 & IntraLink 3.4. Many replies seem to indicate that 64bit Windows PCs now can offer similar performance to UNIX workstations, possibly at a more attractive price. What I thought would be more of an obstacle was, how compatible OpenOffice would be with MS Office. The majority of replies indicated that this was not the case, and that a good degree of integration between the 2 products is possible. So, time for a rethink and investigation of ProE/ProI on 64bit windows! Thanks again for your advice, Chris Glenister. WF3 and Ilink 3.4 Thermo Fisher Scientific (UK)
In Reply to Chris Glenister: I am looking for some advice regarding purchasing some (affordable) UNIX workstations to allow us to work on very large assemblies without suffering from poor regen times. I have come to the end of the road using Windows 32bit PCs and believe that 64bit windows is not going solve all our performance issues. I also would appreciate some advice on how other sites have dealt with the support of Microsoft Office applications (in particular Outlook) in a Unix environment. Is it possible to use Open Office in combination with the Windows enviroment that already exists in the rest of our corporation? Any shared experiences gratefully received. Regards, Chris Glenister. Thermo Fisher Scientific.
