[Chimera-users] Chimera on Linux PPC

[Tom Goddard]

Hi Justin,

  We do not currently build Chimera for Linux with PowerPC processors.  
Chimera includes more than 30 third-party libraries which we build 
automatically on each supported platform (Windows, Mac, Linux...).  
Compiling all those libraries is the real problem.  Many of those 
libraries require special patches to build on all our platforms 
(Windows, Linux, Mac).  It would likely take weeks of work for Linux PPC 
for someone very experienced in compiling open source packages from 
source code.  We do not have the resources to do that for such an 
obscure platform.  The next platform we will likely support is Mac 
64-bit (Intel) sometime in the next year, after that 64-bit Windows.

  The latest Chimera can be compiled without the proprietary molecular 
surface code.  We don't have that latest source code on the web site, 
but if you manage to build all the third-party packages (called 
"foreign" packages on our source code download page) I'd put the latest 
source code on the web and tell you how to disable the molecular surface 
compilation.

    Tom


Justin A. Lemkul wrote:
>
> Dear Sir,
>
> I am installing a few machines in our lab that are running Ubuntu 
> Linux (8.04) on PowerPC architecture.  They are iMac G5 desktop 
> machines, a little old, but new to us.  I have thus far been unable to 
> install Chimera on these machines, being that it is such an odd setup, 
> and PPC is rapidly falling out of use.  I came across a message in the 
> chimera-users archive that made me wonder if installing Chimera on 
> these systems was even possible:
>
> http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/pipermail/chimera-users/2005-December/000607.html
>
> Are you aware of anyone that has installed Chimera on such a system?  
> Do you think it is even possible?  We would really like to be able to 
> use Chimera on these machines (it is installed on all our other 
> machines, and has become a staple in our lab).  Any advice you could 
> give me would be greatly appreciated.
>
> If I can resolve all of the dependencies, would Chimera install 
> without MSMS?  I don't believe I can install MSMS on these machines, 
> given the available installation packages.
>
> Thank you very much for your time and attention.
>
> -Justin
>