yields Scibuntu. If you don’t already know, Ubuntu is probably one of the most popular Linux distributions available because of it’s ease of installation and use. As of 6.10, it has also become my favorite distribution. When not on my MAC, this is my preferred operating system.
You can download a LiveCD (a version of Ubuntu that runs from a CD so no installation necessary) and give it a try. If you like it, in a couple of simple clicks, you can blow off your Windows OS and have a completely FREE (including all the applications you could ever need) secure operating system. There is also a wonderful version for older machines called Xubuntu. If you have an older machine that just doesn’t seem to be able to handle Windows XP but still want to use it for basic browsing, e-mail, word-processing, etc, this is the way to go.
Now, if you are a budding scientist, follow the directions on the page link below and add the following applications to your Ubuntu distribution to create a Scibuntu:
- Tools for reading and writing scientific text: LaTeX, Ghostscript, Ghostview and Acroread.
- Math and statistics tools like Octave, Qalculate! and r
- Plotting tools like Gnuplot, Grace and Labplot
- Bioinformatics packages like Clustalw, Clustalx, Treepuzzle, Treewiewx and T-coffee
- Chemistry tools like RasMol, PyMol and GROMACS
- More console tools shar, memtest, dos2unix, strings, strip etc.
- Development packages for C, C++, Bioperl, Biopython, FORTRAN and Emacs.
If you don’t know what any of this is, you probably don’t need it. But if you do, then you will know that this is a great way to get a good solid operating system on your computer along with some fantastic development tools.
Scibuntu – Ubuntu Linux for scientist and science students
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