Dear All,

This is my first post in this group, and I hope that it is not the last :)

I am Khaled El Ghayesh, an undergraduate Computer Engineering student in my senior year at Cairo University. My thesis is about Grid Computing. We are supposed to build a cluster in our university and connect it to a grid through another cluster nearby in a research center.

The thing is, we almost have no background in Distributed Systems or Parallel Prograrmming. We will start working from the ground-up. I had a question about which Operating Systems to use for building a cluster. I know that it is possible on Windows or Linux (not all Linux Distributions though). I just want to know which Linux Distributions are the best, most optimized and easy to use for building a cluster. We are working with a research team that is using Scientific Linux. Also we heard that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server edition is usually used in building clusters. I just need some feedback about the different distributions used.

One last question. In case we use Windows, will there be any problems ?? Any security or access to prohibited areas problems?? I think using Windows will be easier than all those configurations on Linux, but I needed some feedback on that also.

Thanks, and looking forward for further cooperation,
Khaled