Following the very good experiences we have had with Macs as desktop
machines for daily work (software development, data analysis, writing
articles, paperwork), we recently bought a small cluster of five
MacPros plus a Mac mini (with a fast external disk) as a server.
While we are very happy with the performance of the machines, we also
find them quite frustrating to use, to the point that I am seriously
considering to scrap MacOS X and install Linux on that cluster. I
would like to know if others have had similar experiences, or can
perhaps propose solutions to the problems described below.
1) Using GUI programs over the network
This is such a trivial thing in the Unix/X11 world that we didn't
even think about it before buying the Macs. However, I haven't yet
found a satisfactory solution that lets users log through an Internet
connection (ssh) and run graphical programs on the Mac cluster. I
have tried the following:
- VNC: unusable on machines with French keyboards (I tried only the
free version)
- DesktopTransporter: usable only as long as there is no more than
one user per machine, and even then it's too much of a pain to use
for daily work.
- Timbuktu Pro: unusable through our firewall, which blocks
everything but ssh access.
2) Firewalls
It seems that the Mac world has not yet adapted to the severe
security restrictions imposed by today's firewalls. We have only ssh
access to the Mac cluster, with the option of using ssh tunnels for
other protocols. However, almost everything in the Mac world seems to
require additional ports: XGrid, Server Admin, Workgroup Manager, and
Timbuktu Pro are the programs that I tried and couldn't get to work.
If the machine/port combination were configurable, I could use ssh
tunnels, but they aren't.
Any comments?
Konrad.
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