RFC: Fedora Spin for Scientific Research

[Bill Nottingham]

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.

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.

Bill