Running a Research Lab on Free Software?

Neurotensor asks: "My lab is researching quantum computing, and I don't like the fact that Windows / Visual Basic [seems to be] the preferred solution for controlling the experiments. It's not just a pride thing, unlike many colleagues I know what I'm missing out on, in the free software world. I've wasted a *lot* of time and effort trying to implement some very simple stuff with free (and better) alternatives, simply because certain hardware manufacturers utterly refuse to support anything other than Windows." There were older articles that touched on this subject, 2 years ago, but are others still finding themselves in the same situation as the submitter?

"[Hardware Manufacturers] seem to get very upset when somebody asks them what the register-level interface to their card is. Who could blame them? Their Windows DLL is the perfect solution under [most] circumstances.

I'm not the only one around here getting frustrated, but all before me have been defeated. It seems I am to be as well, for today I have started to learn Visual Basic.

Has anyone had any *positive* experiences trying to move a lab from proprietary to free software? Surely the government-funded researchers of the world have a responsibility to ensure that their work is free, as in freedom. However, I have found out the hard way that it's usually just not worth the effort, following such ideals. You just get frustrated by apathetic colleagues, useless product support, and the conventional wisdom that it's OK to ignore your ideals, so long as you get the experiment working. Additionally, my ordeals convince my peers that free software isn't worth the trouble."

Comments

the problem

[rock_climbing_guy]

Additionally, my ordeals convince my peers that free software isn't worth the trouble.

Actually, I sometimes feel that this is the number one symptom of the obstacles that OSS/free software face. Multiple times, I have been labeled a nut for wanting to us Linux/OSS. I had a roommate in the dorms once who insisted that I would be "happier" using Windows.

As far as experience moving labs from Windows to OSS, I have never moved an entire "lab" so-to-speak to Linux, but it is my experience that in the past three or so years since I was introduced to Linux, it has made big inroads into becoming easier to install and use. The hardware support is definitely better. I remember when I first tried Linux, support for USB mice was still experimental.

These days, migrations from Windows to Linux have been relatively smoothe. I've had great success moving a fileserver from a Windows NT workstation to a less-used Linux box. Usually, it will eventually go down because of a power outage - so I recently purchased a UPS.

The bottom line is, I think that the problem of colleages who drag their feet on using Linux/OSS will be reduced as major distros become increasingly easy to setup and operate and hardware support improves.

Re:Comedi

[Neurotensor]

Well it's so simple you're gonna laugh, I'm controlling a two-axis pulsed-laser spectrometer. The problem is that I've got a National Instruments PCI-7324 stepper motor card to work with and even Comedi (which looks kewl BTW) doesn't support it. I can't blame them, there's just no information out there to start with. NI won't even reply to my emails.

I thought it would be clever to implement a GUI using QT and then simply compiling on Windows with the stubs filled in to use the DLL. How wrong I was. The GUI looks great, but Trolltech's official position is that the Non-Commercial version of QT for Windows isn't supported any more, so you have to use QT 2.3 when 3.1 is out for Linux. I would have even ported my code back to 2.3 but then I would still need MS Visual C++ or Borland C++ Builder 5 (yes, I have version 6 and that's not binary compatible with the QT distribution). In case you're wondering, I did try MinGW but in the time I had available I didn't get anywhere because qmake still looks for a C++ Builder 5 DLL which I don't have. I could download the MS VC++ version of QT 2.3 but I expect to have the same problems all over again. And really if you've paid good money for a development environment like Borland C++ Builder 6, you might as well just use it instead. Oh and I did try to get the NI software running under Wine, I think I might have had some luck that way but I couldn't see how to get the Windows DLL talking to the PCI card in the time I had.

Then came a flurry of ideas for changing the stepper card to something else, say a timer/counter card, and use Comedi. But I quickly came to the conclusion that I've wasted enough time, I have a working stepper card already, and my supervisor really wanted a product using VB anyway because it's the easiest way to get physicists with zero coding experience to use and modify the application to fit their needs. It's logic I can't really beat right now, I wish it weren't so, I *so* wish I could hand him a free software solution with the same benefits to him as a VB solution, but I just can't.

Oh and if you were still wondering, I have to use Win95. That or replace it with the free (as in beer) OS of my choice, which would be Mandrake 9.1. Maybe I'll get an upgrade to Win2K but it bothers me to pay good money for a piece of software I wouldn't need if a) the original Win95 worked without blue-screening randomly, or b) NI would have some Linux support.

There's a guy upstairs who used to have an entire lab running GNU/Linux until he battled Agilent's and NI's lousy Linux support. He finally gave up and converted his lab from Linux to Windows (at great financial cost) so he could keep working on his experiments. Along came the customary driver conflicts, forced expensive updates, etc. etc. It's a sad tale, and it's what I was told when I began asking around in desperation. Now I know he wasn't kidding around :(