Re: Medical Ubuntu Project

2006/9/11, Andreas Tille <tillea@rki.de>:

On Sun, 10 Sep 2006, Dr. Jorge R. Rodriguez wrote:

> Our group is
> working on a Medical version of GNU/Linux, for public hospitals, based on
> debian kernel, called SaluX. So we think that we could join efforts to make
> an exchange between groups for a better product.

This is really good news for our Debian-Med project.  At current stage
Debian-Med is more or less a loose collection of medical related software
inside Debian.  I would be more than happy if we could draw this into
a more practical direction as a "product" that can be used in medical
care.  I don't know whether you know the idea of Custom Debian Distributions.
You can read about it in detail at

   http://people.debian.org/~tille/cdd/

> SaluX has all the services of a GNU/Linux server plus terminal server
> capabilities. It was installed in some hospitals in Argentina without any
> problems.

Your system reminds me to the system that was SkoleLinux in the year 2003
before I had my talk at Debian Conference in Oslo

   http://people.debian.org/~tille/talks/200307_oslo_int/

At this time there existed a Debian-Edu project (similar to Debian-Med
for education but more or less orphaned / dead).  In parallel existed
SkoleLinux which was a Debian based product which was able to set up
a school server as terminal server, support for diskless clients
featuring a lot of educational software.  In the end of my talk I
asked Petter Reinholtsen (SkoleLinux technican):

  (me):     Why don't you use Debian-Edu.
  (Petter): Debian-Edu is dead.
  (me):     So become Debian-Edu yourself.

They got the idea and now SkoleLinux and Debian-Edu is more or less
synonym.  They have the big advantage to keep their system up to date
with current Debian all the time because they are a part of Debian.
The main work was to integrate the thinks that where missing in Debian.
This works perfectly because Debian is what we call it a Do-O-Cracy,
which means the people who _DO_ something decide what is finally _DONE_.

So I have no real idea what SaluX is and the English version is not
very verbose (or I missed something on your pages).  But my strong
recommendation for your project is to follow the principle of the
SkoleLinux people which was a really great success.  We have good
technology to set up terminal servers automatically and serving
clients with software.  This installation can be done with only two
entries:

    Select language
    Input root password

everything else is preconfigured.  All these techniques are ready
in Debian and I can assure you if you would investigate some time
to understand how these tools work you will save a large amount of
time for implementing this yourself.  IMHO, your task would be to
find out

    1. What do I need for my system that is not yet included
       in Debian?
    2. If it has a DFSG free license, how can I get it inside
       Debian?

This list is the exact place to get help for this and the Debian-Med
project has the explicite objective to help you here.

> Keep in touch.

I hope so and I hope we could help you to reduce your time in things
that are already done and give you more time for your real work to
develop the medical applications

       Andreas.

--
http://fam-tille.de