The existing Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) workstation hardware has been operational for nearly 5 years and is experiencing significant performance problems at some NWS sites, often during severe weather operations. To address these problems, the National Weather Service (NWS) is investigating the use of the open source Linux technology and high performance Personal Computer (PC) hardware. The NWS plans to use high performance Intel microprocessor based PC hardware running the Linux operating system. The port of the AWIPS workstation software to the Linux platform, although limited in its functionality, is intended to help solve the performance problems by supplementing, and then later replacing, the existing graphics workstations with new versions having an order of magnitude more processing power. The AWIPS Linux workstation is the first step in a four step plan to replace key components of the AWIPS systems including the Satellite Broadcast Network (SBN) Communications Processor (CP), a pre-processor for the Data Server (DS), and full functionality of the AWIPS workstation over the next several years

During the 90 day period, from May through July 2001, the AWIPS Linux Demonstration was conducted to provide NWS management with information about the installation process and the operational performance, impact and reliability of the new hardware and software. This paper will summarize the configuration of the workstations and the hardware and software installation process at the 15 participating offices: 11 WFOs, 2 RFCs, 1 Regional Headquarters, and 1 National Center. Results of the Installation Survey, filled out by all of the participating sites will also be discussed.