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<DIV><FONT face=Arial> Hello everyone on the list - a new
member here, living in rural Pembrokeshire where I am </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>happily retired with a younger wife, older malt whiskey, 5
Border Collies, 2 cats and chickens </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>in the orchard. Maybe a brief intro before some
?Biobuntu? comments? </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial> I am an old code pusher/scientist -
scientific programming, physics, graphics, etc etc. [The </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>horrors of Fortran77!]. I did do some bsd and
Silicon Graphics (purple machine) unix back </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>in the early '80s - '86 or so, but thats mostly all gone
now, so basically I treat myself (and want </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>to be regarded as) as a Linux noob. It is far
friendlier than I remember all that stuff being back </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>then ... vast improvements in useability and effectiveness
have obviously occured. And I even </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>still recognize some of the words! Nowadays my
interests run more to Guild Wars and Oblivion, </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>and modifying and fiddling with my PC, rather than code
pushing.<BR> Why am I moving to Ubuntu? [Dual booting XP Pro
and Ubuntu Dapper right now]. I HATE <BR>Windoze! And Vista promises to be
a real monster. And one can buy a lot of single malts and <BR>dog food for
its price!<BR> <BR> A special 'Hello' to Tony Arnold,
University of Manchester, simply because of his location. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>1959, old EE Building, U Manchester is where I was first
seduced by computers - the old Ferranti </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Mercury machine. Two 8kb disk drives (Wow!), stone
tablet input, illuminated manuscript output, </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>racks of glowing 6SN7 double triodes ... . A real
computer! I was an undergrad over in Physics, </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Schuster Building? Happy memories! [Got my
degree in '61 and immediately left for the U.S.A. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>as part of the 'brain drain', had a
semi-decent education and career over there for 40+
years]. <BR> <BR> I would have loved to have
volunteered to help at Linux World somehow (we very occasionally </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>visit London) but that time frame is out, and anyway I
have some minor difficulties with travel (like </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>wheelchair, oxygen ...). But if there is maybe a way
I could help the ubuntu cause, at least please </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>ask ... . [Especially if it involves killing
Orcs, Trolls and Goblins!]</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV><FONT face=Arial>
<DIV><BR> ?Biobuntu? O.K., WHY another release
based on another (admittedly good) distro? Most </DIV>
<DIV>potential users of the Vigyaan live CD are, imho, not going to be opening
it up and modifying </DIV>
<DIV>codes. They want packages that work "out of the box" and with all the
gory OS details hidden. </DIV>
<DIV>Imho, anyway. And why should the originators of all the
separate packages be in favour of and </DIV>
<DIV>support yet another distro basis? Knoppix is not, imho, too friendly,
but it is hidden from the user </DIV>
<DIV>in Vigyaan, and does the job reasonably well.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> ?Question? on the side - anyone know a ref to a decent
and fairly objective review and <BR>comparision of a number of the current live
cd distros? Friendliness, useability, bugginess (is </DIV>
<DIV>that a word? - you all know what I mean!), modifiability, blah blah
blah? By the way, on the topic </DIV>
<DIV>of distros, a friend turned up the other day with a copy of mepis. I
was not too impressed with the </DIV>
<DIV>package itself, except for the documentation! Which I think was
first-rate! Ubuntu could maybe, </DIV>
<DIV>imho, learn from the mepis style and content of docs??</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR> Back to ?Biobuntu? <BR> There
are any number of fields where a collection of packages, comparable to Vigyaan
but </DIV>
<DIV>running on Ubuntu, might be useful/valuable. At random:
<BR> - Statistics (Stabuntu?),
emphasis on ecological, zoological, biological - spatial patterns,
<BR> clustering,
dynamics, classification ... . <BR>
- Or Pure Mathematics: topology (folding, knots,
polyhedra,..); cellular automata; number <BR>
theory; tensor calculus (thats symbolic
stuff); graph theory; some basic symbolic maths?, ...
.<BR> - Or an area I came across
recently - systems and compartmental, state variable modelling,
in </DIV>
<DIV> biology and
medicine. Korn & Korn's Desire; the NIH compartmental modelling codes
(name </DIV>
<DIV> escapes me);
s-plane transfer function modelling; etc etc .... . Since a lot of the
users might be </DIV>
<DIV> medical
and clinical, you really need to insulate them from the OS details!
Ubuntu may be ideal here.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> The key here, I think, is to get 1 or 2 captive experts
in the area, who can reliably advise on packages .... . </DIV>
<DIV>Plus someone to handle all the (massive?) paperwork!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> Anyway,
Hello People!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> Off to a
Maddy Prior concert!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
Michael aka Nackles</DIV>
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