VM image to promote Debian within the neuroimaging community

[Michael Hanke <michael.hanke@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I'm thinking about creating a virtual machine image for VirtualBox to
promote the use of Debian among neuroimaging scientists. The target
audience are Windows-users currently using cygwin-based ports of
available Linux/Unix tools, or even worse win32-only stuff just because
they have/want to stick to Windows as their OS.

I think VMs are superior to Live-CDs for this task as the VMs can be
used as a living Debian system that can be further customized. In
contrast Live-CDs always feel like a snapshot of a certain system that
one has to live with.

I want to use VirtualBox, because it is freely available and only
requires little configuration. Besides the usual features of its
competitors it offers two interesting additions.

1. It can run 'headless' and provides the video output via an integrated
   RDP server that can be accessed over the network.
2. It can mount folders/drives on the host system even without a network
   setup.

I want to use Debian etch as operating system and use as much available
packages as possible. The desktop choice would probably be XFCE, because
it require little memory which could be important if the VM host doesn't
have much RAM installed.

I plan to setup a single user (root only via sudo) for that all relevant
apps are fully configured to give a nice works-out-of-the-box feeling.

I'd like to keep it as close as possible to a standard Debian system. I do
not intent to create yet-another-distribution, but a usable example
installation of Debian etch.

I'd be glad to hear your comments. I'd be especially interested in
information if a similar project already exists and what I can do to get
the highest benefit for the Debian project.


Thanks in advance,


Michael



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