Guillaume Frechette
> Dear Statalisters: I have to buy a new Stata and I hesitate between
> buying one to run on linux or windows. The last time I used Stata on
> Unix (that was many years ago), the thing I missed was the ability to
> see graphs immediately and to browse through the data in the data
> viewer. Can you now do those things in the linux version (when
> accessed remotely from a pc running windows)?
>
I use Stata on under both GNU/Linux and Windoze, and am eternally greatful for the
cross-platform compatability that exists.
One key issue here as to whether or not you can browse data or see graphs
immediately depends on how you are connecting from your client (i.e. your computer) to
the remote server (i.e. the one running linux). If you are doing this through a command
line interface (e.g. telnet) then the answer is almost invariably no (although others may
want to correct me).
However if you are connecting via a GUI (Graphical User Interface) (which can be
achieved using a variety of software including Cygwin (which I use), Exceed, and
various other software packages) then the answer is yes. This requires the linux server
to have X11 forwarding enabled.
For example, I have Cygwin (with X included see http://x.cygwin.com/) installed on my
Windows computer at work, and I can obtain a graphical login to the linux server I
maintain at work using the command below...
xwin :0 -query slack.ser.man.ac.uk
Once I have the connection established from a terminal I can start Stata using...
$ xstata &
and the familiar (windows) Stata interface appears. From here I can then use Stata as
under windows, with the ability to -browse- data and view graphs as they are generated.
Basically I think it depends on how you are connecting to the remote computer.
One potential advantage of a GNU/linux version of Stata over Windows is that there is
already a 64-bit version of Stata for Linux already available whilst there is no such
version available for windows...yet (this is of course only relevant if the remote
computer is running a 64-bit operating system).
Hope that helps,
Neil
Neil Shephard
Genetics Statistician
ARC Epidemiology Unit, University of Manchester
[email protected]
[email protected]
"If your result needs a statistician then you should design a better experiment" -
Ernest Rutherford
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