I'm helping my boss select 3 new "super workstations" to be used by myself and a couple others. We are looking to get dual-quad-core xeons to work with. We want all the power we can get today for two reasons: future-proof (well for a little while) and we actually can and will use the power of these machines. This brings me to why I need a little help. Our high-performance computing codes are set to run within linux. We are also using things like MPI2 and UPC for some of our models. The thing is, my boss really loves the new dual 3.0ghz quad core xeons (and a quadro 4500 fx) from Apple. I have configured a machine for about 10k and it's a monster of a beast. I've gotten an almost as capable dell for 9k configured (2.66 ghz chips and quadro 3500 fx). If we got the dells, we would probably be running Suse 10.2 at the moment on them, and I know our codes would be fine. Are there any issues compiling and running these issues within the Mac OS? Are there special things I need to know about the shell or terminal window mac uses? Is there a big difference with the file system on the mac from most linux distros? I just need to know what things we need to watch out for if we leave our current dells to go to these new macs. Any help is so very much appreciated. Thanks!