| Re: Best platform for IDL 6.2? [message #46336 is a reply to message #46335] |
Wed, 16 November 2005 12:46   |
Mark Hadfield
Messages: 783
Registered: May 1995
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Senior Member |
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R.G. Stockwell wrote:
> ...
> My 2cents,
> IDL works well on a windows platform.
I'll second that. I have used IDL with Windows since 1993 and am
reasonably happy with it. A couple of years ago I added Linux (Red Hat
7.?) with a dual boot setup and intended to make the transition to
Linux, but after a month or so I decided it was going to several months
more before I could be as productive in Linux as I was in Windows, and I
couldn't really justify this to my employer. When I get my next PC, I
will probably install both Windows and Linux, but this time using VMware
so I can run both at the same time. The Windows-Linux choice didn't
depend only on IDL but that was a major factor
Pluses (Windows vs Linux) are:
* The IDLDE environment is quite nice on Windows and woeful on
Unix.
* Graphics performance was somewhat better on Windows.
(Originally I found IDL on Linux *very* slow, but I traced
this to a setting like RETAIN. I posted about this on this
newsgroup.) Last time I checked, IDL/Linux was still 30-40%
slower for graphics than IDL/Windows on the same hardware.
I know Karl Schulz has put some work into this, so this may
not be true any more.
* The IDL2AVI DLM is very nice--I use it all the time.
Minuses (Windows vs Linux):
* Can't integrate properly with (X)emacs and IDLWAVE. The
problem is the lack of a console-mode IDL executable on
Windows. It would not be difficult for RSI to produce such
a thing but they choose not to. I do use Xemacs & IDLWAVE
to edit files but then have to switch back to IDLDE to
compile & run. This works better than you might think,
but still...
* Poorer memory handling. This has only become an issue for me
in the last year or so, as dataset sizes have increased. It's
still not a *serious* problem.
--
Mark Hadfield "Kei puwaha te tai nei, Hoea tahi tatou"
m.hadfield@niwa.co.nz
National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA)
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