RFC: Fedora Spin for Scientific Research

[Amit Saha]

Hello:

On 28/05/11 10:03, Amit Saha wrote:
> Hello Bill:
>
> On 05/28/2011 12:38 AM, Bill Nottingham wrote:
>> Amit Saha (droidery at gmail.com) said:
>>> Hello!
>>>
>>> As an effort to avoid installing the same packages (like latex, emacs,
>>> gnuplot..) everytime I do a fresh install of a Linux distro, I decided
>>> to create a Fedora spin to cater the users who use Linux as their main
>>> workstation to help them in their research.
>>>
>>> The software tools used is very much subjective, being determined by the
>>> field of research one is in. So, at this point here are some of the
>>> packages that is there in my spin (These have been mostly determined by
>>> my own field of research which is numerical simulation driven):
>>>
>>> <packages>
>>>
>>> #Languages, Libraries and tools
>>> gcc
>>> gsl
>>> gsl-devel
>>> boost
>>> octave
>>> scipy
>>> python-matplotlib
>>>
>>>
>>> #writing and plotting
>>> texmaker # will install tex-live and associated utils
>>> gnuplot
>>> emacs
>>> emacs-color-theme
>>> nano
>>> vim
>>>
>>> </packages>
>>>
>>> and some other misc. utils. These packages are added to the default
>>> Fedora 15 desktop packages i.e. with GNOME 3. As of now the ISO size is
>>> 1.1G and takes ~4G in the Live environment.
>>>
>>> I see from [1] that a Fedora "Spin for Science" is in the Ideas section.
>>> It would be great to get your feedback on this project. I would like to
>>> work towards its acceptance/validation as pointed out
>>> in [2] -- by adding extra packages and anything else.
>>>
>>> Any thoughts/comments/suggestions appreciated.
>>
>> Seems like a generally reasonable idea. I'd suggest iterating with
>> the SciTech SIG over what they'd like to see in a spin, if you haven't
>> already.
>
> Thanks for showing interest. Before I emailed Rel-eng, I had emailed the
> the SciTech SIG list. Soon after, I saw on the mailman page that the
> mailing list was de-activated. It would ofcourse be great to co-ordinate
> with this SIG for this effort. Would there be a contact person?
>>
>> With respect to the composition, I would suggest maybe seeing if you
>> could frame it in terms of the groups we already have (engineeirng&
>> scientific, development), more than in terms of just packages. For
>> Fedora 16, we can certainly adjust the groups where necessary.
>
> Yes, that is what I initially intended to do. Let me check this up and
> report my findings.

At this point of time, it doesn't look like I can use any of the 
existing package groups to design the kickstart file (except the ones I 
include from -desktop.ks).

Current packages in "Engineering and Scientific" group can be split into 
sub-groups: math, chemistry, physics, biology, geographic,distributed, 
parallel and generic packages. Quite exhaustive! (If such a sub-division 
sounds like a good idea, I can do that.)

My goal in creating a Fedora Scientific spin is however to create a 
"base" level scientific spin which can be used by anyone working in 
research so that he/she already has the minimum writing, plotting, 
experimenting tools available when he/she starts. The current kickstart 
file can be seen at [1]. The ISO file stands at 1.2 G.

I shall look forward to your feedback on this.

[1] 
https://bitbucket.org/amitksaha/custom_linux/src/216b23bbca0c/fedora-live-scientific.ks

Regards,
Amit

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