Greg Folkert wrote: > Great basic rule of thumb... first off if you DO NOT know what BLACS or > LAM is... you don't need it. I apply this rule everywhere. And obviously > you should as well. If you knew what BLACS or LAM then you would > definitely know >WHAT< it is and >WHY< you would need it. I see. And what if I admin a cluster, and a user puts in a request that I install a parallelizable linear algebra kit with features x, y, and z? BLACS seems to support PVM and MPI, which I know about, but its description doesn't provide any other useful information. ScaLAPACK's description is ominously similar in its opacity. meschach only has feature y. lapack's description mentions features y and z, but it doesn't seem to be parallizable. Which do I pick, and have I made the right decision? At the moment, the right decision might rest on me noticing that ScaLAPACK is based on lapack. But then, for all I know, BLACS could be far superior to them both, and include features x, y, and z. I'm probably stuck installing them all, and reading their docs to look for feature x, something package descriptions are intended to avoid. > We(you and Ben) are forgetting the prime reason Debian exists. If you > don't know that you obviously shouldn't be on the Devel list. Maybe > you should just go over to Debian User and actually interface with > people having problems that need to be solved. Rather than piss and > moan about descriptions that are obvious, when you do need them you > know they apply. I think my scenario is completly plausable. And yes, I do read debian-user. -- see shy jo
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