You should use a network installation for workstations and servers if at all possible. NFS, SMB and AFP all work for this purpose. The decreased admin overhead of sharing a single installation is a significant benefit as is the fact that everyone will be sharing a common environment without worrying about individual installations drifting out of sync.
All linux machines need installations of a recent version (6.17+) of csh/tcsh. There are RPMs for Red Hat/CentOS/Scientific Linux 4.x and 5.x in the software tree at /programs/i386-linux/system/RPMs. Red Hat 6 and other recent distributions usually have an up to date version.
SELinux must be disabled.
64-bit machines need the 32-bit compatibility packages installed as well as common 32-bit libraries for graphics, X11, OpenGL, etc, even when using the 64-bit software branch. This is due to a number of binary-only and legacy packages that are only available as 32-bit applications.
The optional fixed-width fonts for Xorg should be installed for applications using the Tcl/Tk, Xview, Motif, etc, graphical toolkits.
This is the current recommended list of packages available in Yum that should be installed on all Red Hat/CentOS/Scientific Linux/Fedora machines:
yum install atk.i686 audit-libs.i686 avahi.i686 cairo.i686 cyrus-sasl-lib.i686 db4.i686 dbus-libs.i686 expat.i686 fontconfig.i686
freeglut.i686 freetype.i686 glib2.i686 glibc.i686 gnutls.i686 gtk2.i686 libasyncns.i686 libattr.i686 libcap.i686 libcom_err.i686 libcurl.i686
libdaemon.i686 libdrm.i686 libgcc.i686 libgcrypt.i686 libgpg-error.i686 libICE.i686 libidn.i686 libjpeg.i686 libogg.i686 libpng.i686
libselinux.i686 libSM.i686 libsndfile.i686 libssh2.i686 libstdc++.i686 libtasn1.i686 libthai.i686 libtiff.i686 libuuid.i686
libvorbis.i686 libX11.i686 libXau.i686 libxcb.i686 libXcomposite.i686 libXcursor.i686 libXdamage.i686 libXext.i686 libXfixes.i686
libXft.i686 libXi.i686 libXinerama.i686 libXmu.i686 libXrandr.i686 libXrender.i686 libXScrnSaver.i686 libXt.i686 libXtst.i686
libXxf86vm.i686 mesa-dri-drivers.i686 mesa-libGL.i686 mesa-libGLU.i686 ncurses-libs.i686 openssl.i686 pango.i686 pixman.i686
readline.i686 sqlite.i686 xcb-util.i686 zlib.i686 redhat-lsb xorg-x11-fonts-100dpi xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-100dpi
xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-75dpi xorg-x11-fonts-misc
This is the current recommended list of packages available in Yum that should be installed on all Debian/Ubuntu machines:
apt-get install libc6-i386 lsb tcsh gawk more-things-go-here-please-email-us
You should use the stock X11, not the Xquartz development version on MacOSForge. We build the
OS X applications with the stock X11.
Portable home directories work better for some software that expect home directories to be local filesystems and case-insensitive.
