[Zope] os module on different os's

[garry saddington]

I have a Zope application that runs on WinXP and Debian sarge without
problems. I am using os.popen and popen2 to run locally installed
applications and use their output in Zope (particularly aspell and
diction).
On Ubuntu Dapper and FC5 however, these os calls fail. Is there a
problem with recent Distros and this module? Python version is 2.3 on
all systems but I tried 2.4 on FC5 and that failed too. 
regards
garry