On Wed, 28 Apr 2010, Kumar Appaiah wrote: > In addition, if folks here have a request for a talk on a particular > topic, which they would not be able to present themselves, it would > still be nice to convey the suggestions to the list and/or Michael, so > that others who might like the idea could take it up, and potentially > talk about that subject.
Although not requested, I've decided to share the abstract I've just submitted. I wanted to get your feedback (does it sound worth "lecturing" or may be some kind of "discussion" would be more appropriate). Here what it was before reformatting: #!/bin/bash Debian: {enri,rea}ching the science community In this talk we suggest to consider few aspects which could help Debian to become the Ultimate OS of choice in the science community. Debian's slogan "The Universal Operating System" has provoked extensive discussions in the recent years. Most of the time we, Debian enthusiasts, agree that Debian generally deserves this title. We primarily agree because we invested our valuable time and efforts to make it such. Unfortunately our sentiment to Debian is often not shared by "outsiders". We keep working hard but nevertheless in the eyes of many Debian, if known at all, remains a Linux for geeks. Nevertheless, some smart people take advantage of the internal knowledge we all share, that "Debian is the best". They refurnish it for "humans" by providing some target audience with explicit hints that this product was created "for them" and often veiling the fact that the actual product is coming from a "geekland" (i.e. us). Often such derivative works diverge from the suggested principle of "stay close to Debian", thus in danger of loosing numerous advantages Debian provides. Recently, the Ultimate Debian Database projects made a significant leap forward by providing assimilation of information about the status of Debian packages in Debian proper and Ubuntu. Debian Pure Blends (formerly known as Custom Debian Distribution) provided a machinery for tailoring The Universal Debian to fit the desires of target user-bases in Science, Medicine, Education, and other domains. Inclusion of information about projects which either are already in Debian, or on the way to it, or even outside of Debian, made Blends an invaluable resource for any Debian user. Moreover they could be considered as a basic FOSS portal where it becomes very easy to find information about projects related to our day-to-day interests. We argue, that unfortunately those efforts haven't brought Debian out of the "geekland" in the eyes of "humans" user-base. It still requires additional efforts to deliver the message that "Debian is for you". Debian is already known in the "geekland" as the most stable Linux distribution and scientific audience is already a primary target of many Pure Blends, such as Debian Science and Debian Med. It seems that visibility is what is missing for enlightening the research communities with already existing advantages of FOSS and Debian in particular. Such visibility could be easily achieved by * spreading the word about Debian via presenting at specialized scientific (outside of FOSS movement) conferences, with known demand on the software being already present in Debian * better visibility of Blends within Debian itself, i.e. by guiding newcomers of www.debian.org to the respective themes (or Blends) of Debian which remain Debian * visibility and integration (sharing ratings/popularity) of Debian with specialized FOSS portals (e.g. nitrc.org, medfloss.org), where Debian could be suggested as an Ultimate deployment platform But scientific computing has its own maggots which need to be addressed before Debian could become indeed the choice one OS in science. In this talk we would like to reiterate on some issues and possible/already suggested ways for resolution * deployment (installation vs virtualization vs cloud-computing vs chrooting) * references (must not enforced but should be readily available) * installation (finer scale selection of blends/tags within d-i) * stability vs dynamics (backports per blend?) Moreover Debian could easily attract more of software developers working on scientific FOSS by providing adequate welcoming material guiding them into the theme of "Scientific Developers Debian". -- .-. =------------------------------ /v\ ----------------------------= Keep in touch // \\ (yoh@|www.)onerussian.com Yaroslav Halchenko /( )\ ICQ#: 60653192 Linux User ^^-^^ [175555]
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