We are in the process of putting together the next Staden Package distribution and have a couple of questions regarding the operating systems we should support. Remember that the CD will contain the binaries for all the supported systems, but only for one version of each operating system.

The current distribution (May 1998.0) was built on the following operating system versions:

• Solaris 2.4
• Digital Unix 3.0 (aka Digital OSF/1 3.0)
• Irix 5.3
• RedHat Linux 4.2

Most of these systems are very old and it would make things simpler for us if we could update to more modern environments. The proposal for the next release, which we hope to be putting together during February, would be to use:

• Solaris 2.5
• Digital Unix 4.0
• Irix 5.3 (ie no change for Irix)
• RedHat Linux 5.1

If you could please inform us which operating system release you are using then this would help us greatly. On most systems the "uname -sr" command will report the operating system name and version.

Additionally, if there is a desire for Solaris x86, we could produce a version (for x86 2.6). Please respond if you would use Solaris x86. (Also if there are other systems which you would really like the package for then do please tell us.)

Thanks,

James Bonfield (jkb@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk).