The IA lab where I’m doing the PhD is evaluating the possibility of buying some Mac Mini intel-based to create a cluster.

We would like to run GNU/Debian on those machines, a queueing system like Sun Grid Engine and a parallel file system…

Does anybody of you have suggestions or pointers where to look at to gain more information?

FIX:

Unluckly among the decision makers for the policy of the lab there are some person who “belong to the dark side”… they believe in Open Source as a “political statement” that as researcher we have moral obligation to do… in other words they claim that publicly-funded research like ours (European Union money) should be done using free tools if they are available, that we should avoid to use closed-source software because we might “loose” our tools in case the license fees are too high (or in case we don’t have anymore the lab who pays for us when we are finished here).

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I’m not telling you that you should believe me. Learn the facts, and the origins behind the facts, and make up your own damn mind. That’s why you have one.