Using Protein Explorer in linux
or other platforms besides Windows or Macintosh.
Protein Explorer (PE) requires the free, powerful MDL Chime plug-in for all
of its functions.
Without Chime, PE would not have been possible! MDL offers Chime 2 only
for Windows and Macintosh. (There is an old SGI version of Chime 0.9z
but it does not support PE.) Despite many requests for a linux Chime
MDL has declined to offer one. This is beyond our control. Nevertheless
PE can be operated very satisfactorily in x86 linux, or in
a Windows subsystem, as detailed
below.
PE works in Netscape (Windows or Macintosh) or Internet Explorer
(Windows only). Other browsers may work but have not been tested.
Disclaimer: We have no affiliation with,
nor financial interest in MDL Information Systems, Microsoft, Netscape,
Codeweavers, VMware, Trelos/Win4Lin, or Citrix/Metaframe.
Links to these sites are offered
for information only.
Please contact
us if you know of
additional software supporting the operation of Windows or Macintosh
OS under other platforms.
- linux
The following solutions work for linux on an x86 computer
only. For linux on
other hardware, see unix below.
- Win4Lin is inexpensive
and it supports Protein Explorer, Chime, and Netscape
very satisfactorily in our own tests.
Win4Lin boots Windows
in 15 seconds on hardware that takes 90 seconds to boot Windows directly.
When Windows crashes, linux survives. Performance (e.g. rotating a
molecule) is as fast as on the same hardware in Windows booted directly.
- VMware is a heavier-duty, more
expensive solution, that we are told by reliable sources also works well
to support Protein Explorer.
Performance is likely to be slower than in Win4Lin.
- It may be possible to get Protein Explorer to work in WINE: "Wine
does not require
Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely alternative
implementation consisting of 100% Microsoft-free code."
If you can provide details, we are interested to add them here.
-
Codeweavers' Crossover Plugin
(available for $20 in October 2001)
makes it
possible to run Chime (for Windows) in linux Netscape
(without a Windows subsystem).
See the
details kindly provided
by Erik Luijten.
At present, Protein Explorer's browser check does not know about this.
Therefore, you can bypass browser checking by using a URL with
the "no browser compatibility check" query
parameter, e.g.
pe.htm?nbc=1
documented in
PE Query Parameters
(linked to the
FrontDoor under
Constructing hyperlinks to PE. Presently (PE 1.901) Erik reports
that PE does NOT work
in this mode, but I am willing to collaborate with anyone who wishes to
devise workarounds for the places where javascript may be stuck. We have
not tested this mode ourselves.
- rdesktop is an open-source
freeware remote desktop protocol client that could be a
solution for linux users who have access to a Windows NT or
2000 computer on their local network. We have no information on
how satisfactory rdesktop is for using Protein Explorer, but
would like to add that information here if you can provide it.
- A commercial but inexpensive remote desktop protocol client
is WinConnect.
Again, we have no information on how well it works, or how well Protein
Explorer works in it, but would be happy to add them here if you can
provide them.
- unix, SGI/Irix, Sun/Solaris, etc.
-
If you have fast network access to a Windows NT server, you may wish to
investigate the commercial software
MetaFrame from Citrix. This software
allows most computers to open a window to the NT server in which
Protein Explorer runs quite well.
This solution has been tested with excellent results
at the San Diego Supercomputer Center and the
European Bioinformatics Institute.
- WINE supports Solaris
and FreeBSD, but we have no information on whether or under what
conditions Protein Explorer
works in this mode.
Feedback to Eric Martz.