Re: does Debian help detect gravitational waves?
On 14/02/16 01:56, Yaroslav Halchenko wrote:
>
> On Sun, 14 Feb 2016, Aurelien Jarno wrote:
>>> https://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/lscdatagrid/doc/reference-platform.html
>
>>> The Ganglia graph (top right corner of the page) appears to be generated
>>> on a Debian host using the official packages (it has ganglia-webfrontend
>>> in the URL)
>
>>> Drill down into the Ganglia reports and we can even see things like
>>> kernel package version
>
>>> http://silkspectre.cgca.uwm.edu/ganglia/?r=hour&cs=&ce=&m=os_release&s=by+name&c=NEMO&h=&host_regex=&max_graphs=0&tab=m&vn=&sh=1&z=small&hc=4
>
>>> os_release: 3.16.0-0.bpo.4-amd64
>
>
>> Please have a look at the article (BTW released under CC license):
>
>> https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102
>
>> The article itself has one thousand of authors from 133 different
>> institutes member of the LIGO and VIRGO cooperation. It is a result of
>> a huge amount of work by thousands of persons in the last 15 years to
>> design, build, improve, operate the instrument, but also to work on the
>> theory or simulation.
>
>> For sure Debian has been used somewhere, just like Slackware, MS-DOS,
>> HP-UX or any other system have helped at some moment. Just looking at
>> one random website from one small subpart of the whole project to
>> conclude about the Debian implication in the whole project just doesn't
>> make sense. It is just like deducing that pelican helps the Debian
>> project because it is used on the Debian blog.
>
> FWIW that link
> https://www.lsc-group.phys.uwm.edu/lscdatagrid/doc/reference-platform.html
> at least now has already explicit listing
>
> Reference Operating Systems
>
> Scientific Linux 6.1
> Debian 6.0 Squeeze
> CentOS 5.3 (to be deprecated)
> Debian 5.0, Lenny (to be deprecated)
>
> So I guess Debian was of some notable help, and I am really glad that our work
> at least tiny bit contributed to this event. But that is it. Somewhat
> twisting while overall agreeing with the point of Aurelien's reply --
> Debian was probably used somewhere along the way of any recent sizeable
> research endeavor simply because it is used in so many scenarios and places.
>
> Was Debian indispensable? probably not, was it facilitating? hopefully yes.
>
I don't think anybody was suggesting it was indispensable.
Nonetheless, Debian appears to have been chosen over other alternatives
and mentioned in a few places
It would be interesting to ask the more general question if free
software is indispensable for such efforts though
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