Miniature Beowulf cluster runs Ubuntu Linux

While reading this article about a miniature Beowulf cluster built by a student and professor at Calvin College, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they were running it on Ubuntu. What was the reason they choose to use Ubuntu, even though they had more experience with Gentoo?
For various reasons, we have been a Gentoo shop for a while. So it would seem fairly obvious that we would use Gentoo. But over time we had found Gentoo to be something of an administrative hassle. Since we wanted to keep Microwulf relatively simple (as simple as possible but not overly simple). and we had experience with Ubuntu, we decided to give that a try first.
Sounds like a lot of people are discovering the value that Ubuntu provides!

Comments

  1. Anonymous9/01/2007 9:03 AM

    The value that Debian provides is the same regarding clusters. Additional, it is non-commerical, more stable, and packages that are in universe in Ubuntu are officially security-maintained in Debian (in spite of those in universe in Ubuntu).

    So, what are the advantages of using Ubuntu for a cluster?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tristan Rhodes9/01/2007 1:38 PM

    anonymous,

    I agree that Ubuntu has much to thank Debian for with every release. My point is that they chose to use Ubuntu because it is simple. That is one of the values of Ubuntu.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous9/01/2007 5:11 PM

    they probably didn't use the desktopcd and probably didn't install a gui.

    honestly, finally, i cant see any differences of simplicity in the cli.

    but i see advantages of using debian, see above.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Unknown9/01/2007 7:19 PM

    Actually, they did install a gui on Node 0. Only on Nodes 1 - 3 did they do a server install of Ubuntu

    ReplyDelete

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