Hi Jeff,

That is an admirable goal, to be sure... :)

Note that I cannot speak too well for either FreeSurfer or
FSL, but it is likely that the OS version hardly matters
(if you won't be compiling). RHEL 5, FC 5 and Fedora 7 are
the ones that I am most comfortable with, and which seem to
work fine. It may be a good idea to stick with an OS that
isn't too many years old.

Note that it may also be a good idea to buy a computer from
a vendor that installs the OS for you, as they should be
able to help if there are any driver issues.

Do you need OpenGL?

Presumably you do, since you will be working with surfaces.

It is a good idea to get a graphics card from either ATI
or nVIDIA, as they both have good drivers for Linux (ATI
drivers were previously awful, but they made great strides
after being bought by AMD).

If so, you will probably need to get drivers either from
rpm.livna.org or directly from the hardware company. This
is generally painless (unless you also need other drivers
that require particular kernel version support, in which
case it may be helpful to have bought the computer from a
vendor that supports you for the linux install).

----

The big question is, do you need to compile AFNI?

This has become a biggie on Linux recently, because of the
openmotif library. Openmotif is no longer considered open
enough, and most OS packages do _not_ provide the library.
We may have to improve support for lesstif in the future.

If the answer is no, then just use the linux_xorg7.tgz
binary package that we distribute, and you should be good
to go.

If the answer is yes, we can ponder more...

- rick