RFC: Fedora Spin for Scientific Research

[Amit Saha]

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.

Regards,
Amit