User:Amitksaha

Hello there! I am Amit Saha. I am a Ph.D student at the University of New South Wales, Australia and my research focus is on Optimization using Evolutionary Algorithms. I have been involved in several open source efforts in the past, like the NetBeans IDE and bits and pieces in some other projects. I pursue technical writing as a serious pastime for few years now. My blog has all the random bits and pieces and links to my articles and community efforts.

I shall summarize my efforts in the Fedora community on this page.

Fedora Scientific Spin
I am a long-term Linux user and have been into full-time scientific research for the past 3 years now. Everytime I have to do a fresh-install of Linux (not so frequently, ofcourse), I have to download a bunch of tools which I use regularly. For example, gnuplot, xfig, LaTex compilers, numpy, etc.

How cool would it be to have a Linux distro which already had these installed? Say hello to Fedora-Scientific

Update #1: June, 24 - 2011

I finally started acting on this idea of mine with an email to the rel-eng list [].

After discussions on the mailing list with Bill Nottingham, I proposed a patch to the comps-f16-xml.in file [].

I already have the kickstart file ready for this one, which I shall post to the mailing list soon, once I have tested my ISO. It currently stands at 1.1 G.

 Update #2: June 29 - 2011

Started discussions on Spins SIG

 Update #3: July 03 - 2011

Created spin page at Scientific_Spin

Lot of interesting feedback and +1s on the local LUG list

 Update #4: July 05 - 2011

Based on the suggestions on CLUG, added a number of development tools and libs and other packages. Please see the kickstart file linked from Scientific_Spin for the details. From being a bare-bone scientific distro, its becoming fully-loaded!

 Update #5: July 08 - 2011

Moved the spin page to "Ready for Wrangler" category. I am currently using a Fedora scientific build on my desktop and all the custom applications seems to be working fine! There is also a discussion page for the spin now. Go there and leave your comments/suggestions.

 Update #5: August 17 - 2011

The spin is still under review. I thought it might be a good idea to have both a GNOME 3 and KDE based spin. Infact I think I like KDE more now :-) So there will be two kickstart files, one for GNOME 3 and other for KDE. Uploaded some screenshots accessible from the Spin page.

 Update #6: October 9 - 2011

The spin has been moved to the Ready for SIG category now. I have decided to go ahead with the KDE based desktop. Time to rejoice.

 Update #7: October 26 - 2011

The Scientific Spin is now all set to be released officially with Fedora 16, and the nightly builds are now available from here. Download the ISO and burn it to a DVD or a USB key (preferably 4G or greater) using "dd if=*.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=8M".

 Update #7: November 1 - 2011

Blog post: Fedora Scientific: The Prologue

 Update #8: November 9 - 2011

Fedora Scientific Spin is out! Get it here.

Packaging
PiCloud client

Google Summer of Code'12 Efforts
Student page

Proposal

GSoC Project Notes

Fedora Resources
How to Create a Fedora Install ISO for testing

Creating a Fedora Live CD

Fedora Custom Spins

Nightly Rawhide Builds

How to Create a RPM package

Fedora Packaging Guidelines

Local Yum repository

Download (not install) packages

Signing your custom packages

Other Fedora Activities
Member and List administrator of Fedora Science and Technology SIG

Miscellaneous (random notes to self)
TBD: Explore openopt for packaging.

Links
Git for Beginners

Git basic branching and merging

Create a patch file for RPM

Contact
Email: amitksaha@fedoraproject.org

IRC: amitksaha

Blog: http://echorand.me