[Quantian-announce] New Quantian release 0.5.9.1 available

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

[ This email is sent to those whose email addresses are in my quantian
   mail folder due to prior emails, plus LWN and DWN who had run previous
   announcements, and as suggested, the openmosix-general, clusterknoppix
   and debian-knoppix lists. Anybody who considers this unwanted is kindly
   asked to send me a private mail and I will immediately remove the 
   corresponding alias entry. --edd ]


Announcing Quantian release 0.5.9.1
===================================


I   What is it?

    Quantian is a remastering of Knoppix, the self-configuring and directly
    bootable cdrom that turns any pc or laptop into a full-featured Linux
    workstation, and clusterKnoppix, which adds support for openMosix. 
    However, Quantian differs from (cluster)Knoppix by adding a large set 
    of programs of interest to applied or theoretical workers in 
    quantitative or data-driven fields. 

    See http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html for more details.

    
II  What is new?

    o First release based on Knoppix 3.4 with many changes such as improved
      hardware detection and support for new hardware, the addition of
      captive-ntfs which may allow write support for ntfs partitions, KDE
      3.2.2 with kdevelop and more;

    o Based on Knoppix 3.4, the clusterKnoppix release from May 10 adds
      kernel 2.4.26 with the 'testing status' openMosix patch as well as
      a non-openMosix kernel 2.6.6; updated openMosix goodies gomd, chpox,
      tyd; support for atheros wireless, cisco mpi 350 wireless, prism54, 
      host-ap

    o New Quantian software includes many new R / CRAN packages such as
      gregmisc, sm, quadprog and the entire snow suite: snow, rmpi, rpvm,
      rsprng for 'Simple Network of Workstations' distributed computing 
      using either one of pvm or mpi; the Axiom computer-algebra system;
      python-tables and cernlib which pulls in a large number of packages
      from the CERN particle physics lab

    o 'kitchen sink' size -- this release comes in at 1.1gb and will /not/
      fit onto a cdrom. It runs really well from disk, see the 'lilo howto'
      http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian/howto_liloboot.html for details
      on how to boot the iso from hard disks.  Burning a dvd with the larger
      iso image should also work.

    o Last but not least, custom artwork thanks to a contributed background
      image provided by Ed Pegg Jr.

    o Mailing lists for Quantian up and running

      Following the 0.4.9.3 release, a Quantian project was opened on
      alioth.debian.org.  So far the only use of the alioth infrastructure
      has been the creation of two mailing lists

        quantian-announce	  for announcements, intended to be low volume
        quantian-general	  for general discussions about Quantian

      Please go to     

        http://alioth.debian.org/mail/?group_id=1425

      for subscription info etc., and start using the quantian-general lists
      for general questions, comments, suggestions or discussions about 
      Quantian.

      Quantian-general is subscribed to quantian-announce, so you only need
      to subscribe to one (but can of course subscribe to both).

    o See http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian/changelog.html for details.


III Where do I get it?

    Downloads are available from the two main hosts both of which also
    provide rsync:

    o U of Washington:  
      - http://www.analytics.washington.edu/downloads/quantian
      - rsync://www.analytics.washington.edu::quantian

    o European mirrors, bittorrent site and cdrom vendors will hopefully
      catch up over the next few days. See 

	    http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html
 
      for download info.


IV  Known Bugs

    o None right now -- so please test away! 


V   Other items

    o Mailing lists have been created, see above.

    o Feedback / poll on package additions or removal

      As always, I welcome comments and suggestions about programs to be
      added or removed. Existing Debian packages get pushed to the front of
      the line.

      Please send feedback, questions, comments, ... to the 
      
	quantian-general@lists.alioth.debian.org

      list to maximise the number of eyes glancing at any one question.

Best regards,  Dirk

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