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   * [http://www.gnuplot.info/ gnuplot] is a ''non-free'' package - it is ''not'' a GNU package - ( ''Permission to modify the software is granted, but not the right to distribute the complete modified source code'' ) for quick and for paper quality plots once you get used to it. CLI only.    * [http://www.gnuplot.info/ gnuplot] is good for quick and for paper quality plots once you get used to it. CLI only. It is a ''free'' package but ''not'' a GNU package as it has a weird licence ( ''Permission to modify the software is granted, but not the right to distribute the complete modified source code. Modifications are to be distributed as patches to the released version. ...'' )

The goal for this page is to collect material around the ideas discussed at [Helen Faulkner's talk http://dc5video.debian.net/2005-07-17/Using_Debian_for_science_research-Helen_Faulkner.mpeg] at [wiki:?DebConf5Talks Debconf5].

Some ideas emerging from Helen's talk

(please complete)

  • The dedicated mailing list [http://lists.debian.org/debian-science/ debian-science] has been created [http://lists.debian.org/debian-science/2005/07/msg00000.html thanks to Pascal Hakim] ([http://murphy.debian.org/lists/debian-science/details.html mailing list statistics]). And if you wonder why the mailing-list reply-to is set to the author instead of the list itself, [http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html here] are some explanations.

  • DebianScience could also be a [wiki:CustomDebian CDD project].

  • It could also be turned into a ["LiveCD"]. [http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian/ Quantian] already does much of this.

  • Development frameworks (should be painless):
    • kdevelop for KDE
    • Anjuta for Gnome
  • [wiki:DebianScienceOctave Is Octave really usable]? The main differences or missing features with respect to Matlab should be documented.

  • Easy and simple tools to plot data (possibly separate by scriptable and/or gui, plotting for papers vs for 'exploring' data)
    • [http://www.gnu.org/software/plotutils/ plotutils] is a GPL package good for quick and paper quality plots either from the command line (e.g. pipe a text file into graph ) or as a library

    • [http://www.gnuplot.info/ gnuplot] is good for quick and for paper quality plots once you get used to it. CLI only. It is a free package but not a GNU package as it has a weird licence ( Permission to modify the software is granted, but not the right to distribute the complete modified source code. Modifications are to be distributed as patches to the released version. ... )

    • python is good at that
    • labplot is a nice gui plotter that handles 3D data
    • openoffice.org calc can be used to plot 2D data
    • [http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/ xmgrace] (from xmgr/ace) seems popular here for 2D publication-quality plotting

    • [wiki:?DebianScienceR GNU R] is a free implementation of the S programming language for statistical analysis. It is very useful for data visualization and other computational science tasks.

    • [["OpenDX"] http://www.opendx.org/] is very powerful (for 3D data) but cannot be started intuitivly (aside from import quirks, it is once you understand the idea, though)

    • [http://mayavi.sourceforge.net/ ?MayaVi] is a data visualizer written in Python based on [http://public.kitware.com/VTK/ vtk]; its available as debian package "mayavi"

    • [http://www.paraview.org/ ?ParaView] is a parallel visualization application based on [http://public.kitware.com/VTK/ vtk]

    • [http://soft.proindependent.com/qtiplot.html ?QtiPlot] (GPL, no debian package yet) young promising [http://www.originlab.com/ Origin] clone

  • Necessity of a [wiki:DebianScienceFortran good Fortran integration]

    • Requires also libs (e.g. for FFT) which are often present in add-ons for commercial compilers (FFTW connection in Fortran working now?)
  • Useful tools for writing papers - word processing and !LaTeX
    • kile (KDE late editor)
    • openoffice.org (office suite - good but not 100% !["MSOffice"] filters)
  • Useful mathematical libraries
    • [wiki:DebianScienceFftw FFTW and ["FFTW3"]] (Fast Fourier Transforms)

    • [wiki:?DebianScienceBlas ATLAS and LAPACK] (Linear Algebra)

    • [wiki:?["DebianScienceGSL"] GSL] (special functions, pseudorandom numbers, optimizers, solvers, etc. etc.) - ATLAS and LAPACK and BLAS will be installed by default dependencies if you install GSL in debian sarge

    • ["GLPK"] (linear, integer and mixed programming library)

  • ?DebianScienceDebianLinks

  • ?DebianScienceOtherLinks

Efforts that could be undertaken

  • ["DebianScienceCDD"]
  • ["DebianScienceLiveCD"]
  • ?DebianScienceClassification

  • ?DebianScienceSponsoring

  • ?DebianScienceAstronomy

  • ?DebianScienceBiology

  • ?DebianScienceChemistry

  • ?DebianScienceConferenceTools

  • ?DebianScienceDataFormats

  • ?DebianScienceDataPlotting

  • ?DebianScienceElectronics

  • ?DebianScienceGeography

  • ?DebianScienceHardware

  • ?DebianScienceMathematics

  • ?DebianSciencePhysics

  • ?DebianScienceProgramming

  • ?DebianSciencePublishing

  • DebianScienceTips

(many still missing)

Unfilled needs

Other contributions

(some thoughts added by smoe):

Independent from Helen's presentations that I cannot access at the moment there is

  • A technical side of things
    • Open Hardware for data aquisition
    • Linux Lab Project
  • Huge amount of software
  • A community side of things
    • This wiki page
    • Debian at large
    • Others
    • This