Operating Systems Overview

The GNUmed practice software consists of two parts:

• The client program runs on the doctor's computer, and stores nothing except some preferences and some recent activity.
• The server stores all clinical data, and is usually set up and run on a separate computer.

GNUmed client and server software are designed to run on any (or a mix) of GNU/Linux, Apple's Mac OS X, and Microsoft's Windows. Herewith, a guide to information we have pulled together to date:

1. Debian is the Linux distro for which we have binary installers and some greater familiarity and usage within the GNUmed group.
2. Gentoo, Red Hat and have each been used by developer list members, but only sparse (if any) notes are available.
3. Certain older SuSE und Ubuntu releases have been incompatible with GNUmed dependencies
4. Mac OS
   • ships with root (and therefore sudo) disabled
   • package versions within a shipping Mac OS "framework" can be outdated, which requires methods to make newer packages available without disturbing the old
   • client programming issues:
     • MacOSX doesn't do Move*InTabOrder() across sizers (which Linux/Windows happily do)
   • ... more at IssuesMac.
5. Windows
   • on XP (if not Vista), DOS still needs to be able to understand paths, and is unable to tolerate space characters in path names, therefore requiring extra levels of shell quoting, for example in config file arguments as described at IssuesWindows