1. GNOME ScienceCD

The GNOME ScienceCD is supposed to be a collection of educational and scientific GNOME and GTK+ applications, distributed in Autopackage format. The goal is to make something like The OpenCD or the OpenSourceCD (German) but with Linux science applications.

1.1. TODO

Build initial version of the CD.
Set up an IRC channel.
Build a website, including
- an database to track university adresses and local GNOME University Outreach advocates (Which universites exists? Is there a maintainer right now? How many universities do we cover?)
- a database for press contacts, including mail support
- a bittorrent server to distribute the ISO's and feed mirrors.
- a news page, probably fed by advocate blog clients
- a planet page to aggregate developer blogs (?)
- a ticket system to track user wishes (and to sent them to the appropriate bug database) (?)
- a wiki maybe to write and translate articles about the project, and the projects applications. (?)
- an icon set for forum/web page advertising. (?)
- a database for proprietary science applications to sent out marketing material about GNOME's development environment. (?)
- a database for local PC dealers to sent out marketing material to them (think: "Special offer: The Ubuntu student start PC!" GNOME's not doing a distribution so Ubuntu will be a better brand for local dealers to use.)
Gather more applications (to satisfy open demands) by updating them to proper GNOME applications.

1.2. Suggested Applications

Project	Maint. approval	UI Design	Autopackage
SciGraphica	TODO	TODO	TODO
Ghemical	TODO	TODO	TODO
GChemPaint	Yes	TODO	TODO
GNUTU	TODO	TODO	TODO
Celestia	TODO	TODO	exists
Nightfall	TODO	TODO	TODO
Gabedit	TODO	TODO	TODO
RoadMap	TODO	TODO	TODO
gnumexp	TODO	TODO	TODO
Qalculate!	TODO	TODO	TODO
Gnofract 4D	TODO	TODO	TODO
Coriander	TODO	TODO	TODO
pdnMesh	TODO	TODO	TODO
Genius	TODO	TODO	TODO
LucidLife	TODO	TODO	done
Oregano	TODO	TODO	TODO
QCADesigner	TODO	TODO	TODO
Gwyddion	TODO	TODO	TODO
G3Data	TODO	TODO	TODO
OpenEuclide	TODO	TODO	exists
Dr. Geo	TODO	TODO	TODO
Dia	TODO	TODO	TODO
AbiWord	TODO	TODO	exists

1.2.1. Releated (command line) software

Maxima is a computer algebra system similar to Mathematica and Maple.
Octave performs numerical calculations. It complements Maxima.
R is a great statistical computing package.

1.2.2. Related projects and information

Quantian - A remastered Knoppix CD with science applications
VigyaanCD - Yet another remastered Knoppix CD with bioinformatics, computational biology and computational chemistry applications.
Scientific Linux - A recompiled RHEL from FermiLab, CERN and many other labs.
ArchOS - A distribution for archaeologists. (Article with more info)
the Linux for Astronomy cdrom project
the Linux for Biotechnology cdrom project
the Linux for Chemistry cdrom project
Linux4Chemistry
FREEDUC CATALOG (Targets education but useful)
Linux in science reports (03/2000 - 08/2001: probably outdated)
Scientific Computing HOWTO
Linux Astronomy HOWTO
Ubuntu science packaging team
Debian science packaging team

1.2.3. Advocacy Howto material

How to advocate for FOSS in schools

2. Comments

I suggest we rather support the Scientific_Linux project unless really somebody is working hard on this. But maybe providing a good GNOME for Scientific Linux is easier?

Scientific Linux is just another (complete) distribution, not an add-on CD for the major distributions. This is no alternative for the ScienceCD. --ClausSchwarm

CategoryMarketing