Features

An alpha version of the Linux distribution/appliance based on openSUSE is now available for Download and testing purposes. It uses the GNOME 2 desktop environment. These are the features

Pre-installed Bioinformatics software

• Boxshade
• ClustalW and ClustalX
• Dialign
• EMBOSS with emboss-explorer web-interface
• Genepop
• Mafft
• Muscle
• NCBI BLAST
• wwwblast
• Prank
• Probcons
• Biopython
• BioPerl
• Sequence Manipulation Suite 2
• Wise2
• Rasmol
• Gromacs
• Garlic
• Openbabel
• Chemtool

A dream for biologists programming in Python

• Python
• Biopython and the third-party tools it supports
• python-matplotlib
• IPython
• PyQt for GUI programming
• Additional modules can easily be installed from the Python repository of openSUSE Build Service

General programming

• Git version control system
• Gedit and Vim text editors
• Meld diff/compare tool
• Qt designer
• R

Support for Bibliographies

• Firefox with the Zotero addon
• Insert citations and bibliographies in OpenOffice and LibreOffice documents using Zotero-OpenOffice integration addon.

Standalone BLAST

• A standalone BLAST installation with local web-interface

Database development

• PostgreSQL RDBMS installed with a sample database
• pgAdmin can be used to create and administer databases

Office applications

• LibreOffice for documents, spreadsheets, presentations and databases. It can also read write Microsoft document formats (doc, xls, ppt etc.,)
• Okular for reading Postscript and PDF files
• Dropbox (installed on first use)
• Keepnote note-taking program

General applications

• Thunderbird mail client
• Chromium and Mozilla Firefox web browsers
• Gimp, Inkscape, Dia and Gwenview for graphics/photo management
• FileZilla – FTP client
• LyX – LaTeX GUI with beamer class for presentations
• Krdc remote desktop viewer (for VNC and RDP sessions)
• Pidgin instant messenger client
• Amarok and Kaffeine for multimedia playback