Oh by the way, I finally found a distribution of MOPAC7 that works. I needed to hack the Makefile a little once it was generated to work around problems with MAIN__ and main() in libf2c so I could actually get a binary. But other than that, it’s been great!

A couple of possible ways to “fix” the MAIN__ problem:

1. Add this to your C source:
int MAIN__( )
{ return(0);
}

2. Add this to LDFLAGS:
-Xlinker -defsym -Xlinker MAIN__=main

Incidentally, I got Tinker working too. Apparently Firefox sometimes doesn’t like downloading complete files. wget –passive-ftp worked perfectly.

So now I’ve got a quasi-complete computational chemistry workstation here. Just gotta get some molecular dynamics stuff on here — already got quantum covered, as far as free programs go.

My next plans include NAMD, plus the usual Portage stuff such as Ghemical, MPQC and GROMACS.

Reading Havoc’s blog reminded me of how I wanted to focus on usability, primarily to help in the creation of a Gentoo installer. It’s a little bit of a weird project, because it has two distinct target audiences: automated deployment and (clueless?) end users who want/need a GUI installer. So it’s been interesting.

The code is getting near finishing up a working alpha — but we’re looking for experts in OO and Python to help look it over and chip in some ideas, answer some questions and maybe write some code. Stop by #gentoo-installer on Freenode IRC if you’re interested. Experts on UI design are also welcome.

I read another quick thing on usability the other day, perhaps linked from gnomedesktop.org?

It also reminded me of my need to actually read Joel Smolsky's “User Interface Design for Programmers.” I’ve owned it for months, but it’s still a ways down on the “when I have free time” list.