Which Linux kernels and Linux distros are supported by G-WAN?

Question

I can find a statement at the beginning of the user's manual:

version 3 for Linux
(tested with Debian and CentOS 32-bit and 64-bit)

I am using Ubuntu 12.10 64-bit for development.
So far, I found no problem with it, but I still have no confidence on it, since there is no official announcement from gwan about this.

Answer 1

At least G-WAN v3.3 should be compatible with the Linux distributions used when the development started in 2009 (Ubuntu 8+).

G-WAN v3.10+ added significant enhancements detailled below.

There are many different Linux distributions, but most of them use a common 'root' distribution, and the most commonly used are Debian (Ubuntu uses Debian) and Red Hat (CentOS uses Red Hat), both of which have been tested during development.

But the other distributions rely on the same Linux kernel, making any difference only possible in 'extensions' like file systems, etc. And, thanks to its users feedback, G-WAN v3.10+ has fixed non-standard file system issues (by handling those FSs that ignore system flags).

For this same reason, old GBLIC versions could also a problem for G-WAN v3.3, but G-WAN v3.10+ re-implemented those function calls that could pose problem so 10-year old Linux distribution should work fine now.

This is why list of Linux distributions that support G-WAN is very large - probably too large to be worth publishing.

Now, the kernel question is more interesting, not because it is a blocking issue (in G-WAN v3.10+, wrappers have been written for potentially missing syscalls since the Linux kernel 2.5.8) but because of the lack of performance on very old Linux kernels.

In those old kernels, G-WAN can't benefit as well as multicore systems because the OS kernel itself does not support multicore. But since G-WAN is fast server even when used with one single thread, G-WAN will not be the bottleneck.

Compatibility is an incremental process since new versions of the system parts (OS kernel, GLIBC, other system tools and libraries, etc.) are not always backward-compliant (remember the recent Linux linker issue).

In this regard, user feedback rules - and G-WAN has made tremendous efforts in this matter recently.

Answer 2

I've made a bash script to install most of (if not) all the required packages and dependencies used to run the 90+ G-WAN servlets with the latest G-WAN release (at the time of this post (03-16-2016): the last public G-WAN release #7.12.6 64-bit).

You can get this installation script (that also downloads and installs G-WAN itself): here

Then, use the following commands (in a terminal session - Desktop or Server flavor):

cd /the-folder-where-you've-downloaded-the-script
tar -xjf G-WAN_full-install.tar.bz2
sudo ./G-WAN_full-install

This script (with English (default tongue), French, German and Spanish dialogs used with regard to your OS language) will allow you to both install G-WAN and select the 15 different programming languages available with G-WAN (and their required packages depending of your OS distribution) to play with almost all the 90+ G-WAN free provided servlets with the following Linux distributions:

-ArchLinux
-Bridge
-CentOS
-Debian
-ElementaryOS
-Fedora
-LMDE
-Manjaro
-Mint
-RHEL
-Ubuntu and all its derivatives (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, etc.).

and whatever the kernel version.

The 15 programming languages currently are:

-ANSI C
-ASM
-C++
-C# (Mono)
-Gnustep
-Go
-Java
-Javascript (NodeJS)
-Lua
-Perl
-PH7 (the PHP compiler)
-PHP (the php5-cli mode)
-Python
-Ruby
-and Scala

Note: Objective C and Objective C++ are also available but only with Ubuntu Precise Pangolin (12.04 LTS).

Hope this helps.

Please feel free to come back to me for any impovement to make to this script.