Hi!
Today I’d like to spend some words on a particular Open Source project which aims to make know, test and finally use the available tools for molecolar biology, bio-technologies and bio-informatics in general.
This world is overwhelmed by a number of “tools” divided in an ocean of productors, licences, repositories and kind of package (rpm, deb, Z, tar.gz, plain code…).
Enter Bio-Linux.
The Bio-Linux project starts from a branch of UK’s NERC (National Environment Research Council) dealing with biology.
This NEBC proudly has took in hand this shattered cosmo of open source software for bioinformatics under his own “umbrella” and then has gone further … has created a full GNU/Linux distribution, building over the solid core of Ubuntu (on it’s Long Term Support 8.04 release).
Today Bio-Linux 5 is:
- a LiveCD operating system;
- a fully functional operating system running on desktop and servers alike;
- a bioinformatics repository for Ubuntu
and all this is fully supported and given the news on the NEBC and NERC there’s money to guarrantee that for the expectable future.
Personally at work I’ve had chance to appreciate this distro in all the flavours listed above and also as a VMware’s appliance.
If you’ve already running an Ubuntu 8.04 box in this wiki page you’ll find how-to add the biolinux repository to your sources.list. There it’s also stated that there’s some kind of compatibility with Debian and also with the latest 9.04 release, even if for a couple of software there are occasional bugs.
But, on the workplace, expecially when the user has to USE his desktop and not work to make it run, Ubuntu 8.04 (with an updated copy of OpenOffice and a couple of backports) it THE way go, at least for me.
As a personal, final note, I must regret on the strickt control of the repository … I’ve witnessed a similar Biolinux project, focused on the RPM world being abandoned in 2007 supporting ancient distros like Fedora6 and RedHat 9 … I’d prefer a strong team in the Ubuntu (or $distro) community claiming “we will take care of all things bioinformatics, like it’s done for Compitz or other focused projects in the past.
A change of menthality is needed so, when the Public Administration (or a private) invests on an open source technology the RoI must be seen in the product itself (and/or on how it facilitates works or makes you make more money increasing the productivity) and not in a self-owned fancy site claiming “I MADE IT, I AM BIG, GIMME MORE MONEY”.
Don’t you think so?
Written by two Debian developers — Raphaël Hertzog and Roland Mas — the Debian Administrator’s Handbook started as a translation of their French best-seller known as Cahier de l’admin Debian (published by Eyrolles).
