I am a long-term Mac user who is considering switching to Ubuntu. I am not a system guru. I program in fortran and mpi for cfd applications on high-performance computers.
I am considering getting 32 cores using 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2683 V4 processors for software development. Installing gfortran (gcc-5.2) and mpich-3.2 on a Mac is reasonably straight forward for someone with my background, but I am concerned that I will have trouble installing gfortran and mpi using Ubuntu linux.
The system that I am considering buying is a lot more powerful and cheaper than a 12-core Mac Pro, but it only makes sense if I can get fortran and mpi working on it. How big of a job is it for someone with very limited Ubuntu experience aside from testing it using a CD on my Mac, which went well?