Re: [Scitech] Fedora Scientific and Included Packages
by Stuart Mumford
Hello,
>Regarding the first question: I think the SciTech SIG list (this one) is
>the best place. You might want to kickstart a new thread with your
>proposal and initial thoughts.
I will start working on this next week, having a bit of a hectic end to this
week as I am away this weekend and my supervisor is back on Monday!!
With regards to the meta-package idea the response I got from the packaging
list is as follows:
"
So long as they meet our licensing guidelines, there's nothing preventing
including of the required packages. Since IDL is proprietary, I don't
think a meta-package in Fedora is appropriate, but you could distribute
this yourself for your use and that of others.
"
I think for the inclusion of ~10 packages in the distro it would make the
installation of a commonly used piece of software much easier. I shall
probably look into creating and maintaining a rpm file with all the deps in
on my website.
> I have begun to put together all the packages that Fedora Scientific Spin
ships with here [1]. Kindly let me know if you see any stark omissions.
The only thing I have thought of is under data visualisation is the
Enthought "mayavi" package. Which is a really good 3D data visualisation
package built on python.
Finally, Is there any more news on including both KDE and GNOME in the spin,
and also how would we go about customising the installer to select one or
the other, and later potentially the package categories?
Stuart
P.S. Are you still looking for suggestions of wallpapers to include?
12 years, 4 months
Re: [Scitech] Fedora Scientific
by Stuart Mumford
Hello,
>You read my mind! I have been thinking of doing this since the day I saw
the engineering and scientific group.
Nice to know! Great minds or idiots you choose!
>A good starting point would perhaps be to email the release engineering
>list [1] and state your intention citing the comps files. [2]
Excuse my inexperience,
What is the method to achieve this then? Is it to write a comps file to
define the categories and sub-categories, then include this in the Spin, or
in Fedora in general?
What would be the best way to get suggestions of categories / packages from
the wider community? And what about intergration with groups such as the
Astronomy SIG?
Also, would the best place to start be to branch the comps files git tree?
Or not?!
>As far as I know, Fedora's "package groups" try to address such a concern.
> I might be completely off track here though. But, please discuss this
issue on the packaging list[.]
I have emailed the packaging list about this FYI.
Thanks
Stuart
12 years, 5 months
Re: [Scitech] Fedora Scientific
by Stuart Mumford
Hello,
I have had a thought regarding packages and adding software, while (correct
me if I am wrong) the idea of this spin is to have a distribution that is a
good base point for many different types of scientist, it is not possible to
include all the software that people want or all the specialist software
that people would use in specific fields.
So I was wondering if it would be possible to add some extra categories to
the package manager (GUI) to allow people to find, or install en-masse the
software they might need. My thoughts were we could have a large Sci/Tech
spin category with sub categories such as Astronomy, Physics, Biology
(etc...) with the ability to browse the packages in those lists or install
all of them (or recommended subsets).
Stuart
12 years, 5 months
Fedora Scientific
by Stuart Mumford
Hello,
>Please see the f16 comps file [1]
>for all the packages which are installed as mandatory in the
>@engineering-and-scientific group.
Ok, excellent I wondered where that full list was hiding.
>Thanks for your suggestions. Funny, I think I missed 'spyder'
Definitely include spyder, think it is the best DE for scientific software I
have used (miles above Eclipse in the form of the IDL DE)
I have thought of another couple of packages that I use, both of which are
flagged as optional in the @engineering-and-scientific group, does this mean
they get installed?
pybibliographer (a BibTeX editor)
Asymptote (a graphing language that integrates with LaTeX)
> Do you mean to say, that you would like to install just the packages which
are needed for running IDL?
That is exactly what I meant, it took me about 1 hour to dig myself out of
IDL 7 dependency hell when I needed to install it. I posted up the list of
dependencies and how I worked them out on my blog. http://goo.gl/6a7jM
<http://goo.gl/6a7jM%20>
> its something which could be definitely looked into.
It's not a huge number of packages, although a lot of 32bit versions of
already install 64bit packages were needed. Could some kind of
"meta-package" be created to allow it to be easily installed if needed?
> Also, how do you find, GNU Data language [1]?
Ohhhhh, never seen that before!! That might be worth putting in?
Is there a GUI for it? (like the IDL DE)
> I will try and see if keeping GNOME3 based spin is possible or not.
What about an option on install? Or would that cause issues with the iso
size?
Stuart
12 years, 5 months
Fedora Scientific
by Stuart Mumford
Hi,
> This is the location of the current KS file [1].
Ok shall have a good look through, and have a think about things I have
installed on here recently. Is there such a thing as optional packages/
package groups to include with the spin, because there is a list of
dependencies for programs like IDL which if people need to use being able to
install and configure in one go would be simpler?
The only things I can think of are Python based:
spyder
python-matplotlib
NumPy
SciPy
I couldn't see these in the KS file?
> I wanted to have both versions, but the policy requires just one. :)
So we can't offer a choice on the desktop environment? That's a big shame
because it reduces the usefulness and flexibility of the spin?
Stuart
12 years, 5 months
Fedora Scientific
by Stuart Mumford
Hello,
I stumbled across this spin recently and was quite interested primarily
cause I have just stared using Fedora at work (I am studying for a Physics
PhD).
Is the list of packages in the KS file on the wiki complete/ the best place
to see the included packages ? Because I have some suggestions of things to
put in.
Also (for the record) I am more of a Gnome 3 person than KDE :p
Thanks
Stuart
12 years, 5 months
Fedora Scientific: Slogan suggestions
by Amit Saha
Hello all:
Do you have a suggestion for a slogan for "Fedora Scientific". Here is
one I thought:
[1] The Linux for Scientific Computing
Kindly put forward your suggestions, as we will have to decide one very
soon.
Much appreciated.
-Amit
--
http://echorand.me
12 years, 5 months
Fedora Scientific Spin
by Amit Saha
Hey all:
Just wanted to give a quick update to you all, that the Scientific Spin
[1] is now in the "Ready for SIG" category, which means closer to an
official release with Fedora 16.
Do take a look at the spin KS file and make suggestions. Also would
appreciate if any of you would like to volunteer with suggesting a
relevant, but catchy slogan?
As always, thoughts/comments/suggestions appreciated.
Best,
Amit
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Scientific_Spin
--
http://echorand.me
12 years, 5 months