Choosing GNOME and not something else
I personally like GNOME and more so with GNOME 3. Yes, hate me if you want to!
Packages currently Shipped
I should point out here that my idea is to have a generic toolset made available. The number of tools currently available in different domains- Physics, Chemistry, Biology is just too many. Including them all in one big spin may not make a lot of users happy, simply because if I am a engineering researcher, the Biology tools are just useless to me.
I haven't actively looked into applications which may not be available in the repository and is important to a spin such as this. Needless to say, I am going to take upon the responsibility of packaging such software, when I come across one, or its pointed to me.
If you come across a package which you want shipped, please add them here.
Miscellaneous
Science wallpapers? (For example, see here)
Possible Future additions (Please add!)
Texlive 2009 or later (AMIT : IIRC, Texmaker pulls them in)
Kile (AMIT: Kile pulls in KDE libs, so I decided for texmaker)
Lyx (some people like it) (AMIT: Will be added)
dia (AMIT: Already in)
GGobi (AMIT: Will be added)
coqIDE etc (AMIT: Will investigate)
G3Data (AMIT: Will be added)
xfig (AMIT: Already in)
cantor (AMIT: Will be added)
scilab (AMIT: Will be added)
rkward (AMIT: Will be added)
yacas (AMIT: Will be added)
euler (AMIT: Will be added)
ksnapshot (AMIT: Again, will pull in KDE libs, need to give this a thought, whether to go with KDE or GNOME)
gimp (AMIT: Will be added)
vpython (Proposed by AMIT)
referencer - a Bibliography manager (Proposed by AMIT)
mendeley-desktop - Manuscript library organisation. (Proposed by Cameron McPherson in a private discussion)
wine (Proposed by Cameron McPherson in a private discussion)
shutter - screenshot grabbing tool (Proposed by Cameron McPherson in a private discussion)
pdf-shuffler - PDF manager (Proposed by Cameron McPherson in a private discussion)
backintime - Backup utility (Proposed by Cameron McPherson in a private discussion)