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Unlike Mac OS or Windows, Linux rarely comes pre-installed on hardware. The customer is left to identify the components that will plausibly work together, to install the operating system, and to configure everything. Available hardware and device drivers together with the ever-evolving lore of configuration makes it difficult to provide a current comprehensive recommendation. Instead, IS&T offers the guidelines detailed in the following section.

Guidelines

Laptops:
Even though laptops are an ever-more important part of the MIT computing milieu, the IS&T recommended and supported Linux distribution, Red Hat Enterprise Linux does not fully support power management, or conveniently support wireless networking. For this reason, IS&T recommends against purchasing a laptop to run Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Customers requiring Linux on a laptop will need to carefully research other distributions and will be on their own to determine a workable configuration.

Peer support for Linux laptop exploration can be found at:

• Mailing list linux-help@mit.edu: Members of the list are volunteers. It is not an IS&T-managed service.
• Online Laptop Linux Discussion Forum: Hosted outside MIT.
• Linux on Laptops: Hosted outside MIT.

In the future, IS&T hopes to offer an online collaboration space where members of the MIT community can help each other identify hardware and solutions to Linux laptop computing.

Desktops:
MIT maintains a desktop computing recommendation.

IS&T tests Red Hat Enterprise Linux against that recommendation and documents any problematic issues. Customers are advised to review the relevant Known Issues documentation before purchasing the currently available IS&T recommended desktop configuration for use with Linux.

Servers:
The best source of information about what servers will work with Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the Red Hat Hardware Compatibility documentation.

Athena:
Athena is an integration of applications and services layered on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Athena cluster deployments are based on the current year's Recommended Desktop Computers hardware configuration. The Athena installer, automatic updates and all applications and services are guaranteed to work while that configuration is available in clusters (in practice three or four years.) This is the configuration we recommend. Limited support is available for install and OS issues with other configurations. Other hardware that is supported by the baseline Linux OS (Red Hat Enterprise 4 this year) can be expected to work, but is not guaranteed.

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