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Quantian live cd has backported Openmosix kernel and beaucoup science and math goodies.
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html or if website is down just google " quantian" and check out the cached page.
I found it not hard to use, when I last used it a few years ago, which was a nice feature when Openmosix was in progress.
Frankly I miss it.

Or for those who already use the R package, that's also nice. When dc doesn't cut it, I fire up R.

Also, this never clicked for me, but it seems like a good idea: http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/code/littler.html

Something you might want to experiment with is Quantian. It is a bootable linux distro (knoppix descendant) with clustering (openmosix) and a huge variety cluster capable scientific & financial open source tools built in. It is a very quick & easy way to set up a cluster to experiment and see how you application could be altered to work well in a massively parallel environment. I've never seen a quicker or easier way of building a cluster. With Quantian and a pile of networked PCs, you can literally have a openmosix cluster in minutes.

Every year here in the USA we have something called "Take Your Child To Work Day". Of course, since I work at a computer company, I volunteered to run a session and used FreeDuc. And I gave each participant a copy of the CD and the manual. We had some left over, but the kids loved it! I was quite amazed with what was on the CD for "professional" users. It's almost as complete as the "grown-up" version, Quantian (http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian). BTW, there is a FreeDuc 1.5 aimed at younger (primary school) students. I have not checked it out, though.

• CAE Linux - A LiveCD which lets you try out SALOME and Code-Aster
• Quanitan - A LiveCD with QCad,
• Impact - Finite element
• QCad - 2D CAD
• BRL-CAD - 3D CAD
• Open CASCADE - software development platform for 3D CAD, CAM, CAE, etc.
• Code_Aster - FEM
• Salome - pre/post processing

damn syntax
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html
there try that.

Yes,octave,it and other tools you may want can be quickly tested and utilized by downloading the Quantian dvd image and burning.Quantian is a mostly scientific/mathmatic distro made from knoppix.You can find it at http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html.Hope this is some interest to you.

I was disappointed to see the generally negative view the community seems to have regarding Debian's future. A little background: I am an engineer (not a computer scientist / programmer / developer) that used Unix a good bit a number of years ago. To me, an OS is simply a platform to run desired applications (mathematical analysis, etc., along with general office software).

I didn't mind DOS, but have always hated being dependent on an insecure, unstable Windows - especially when Microsoft continuously decides that I don't really need backward compatability. I tried Linux about 5 years ago, and while I am sure that Linux would have provided an excellent computing platform, I didn't have the time needed to make it do the things I needed it to do. About a year ago, I came across Quantian (http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html) - a distribution based on Debian - and got very excited about Linux again. So far, this is the only distro that I've come across with such a wide range of F/OSS scientific and engineering analysis tools.

I don't want to depend on any distro that is controlled by a large commercial enterprise (Novell - Suse, Red Hat Fedora, etc.), because the time may eventually come when they decide that supporting a free distro is no longer in the company's best interest. (I still have bad memories of how Novell let WordPerfect languish to the point that it went from 85% of the wordprocessing market to almost nothing before dumping it on Corel.)

Also, from the comments (today and previously) regarding Debian based distros like Ubuntu, Knoppix, Games Knoppix, etc., it seems that there will be a lot of disappointed people if Debian folds.

Here's to hoping that there will always be high quality F/OSS engineering and scientific tools easily available, and that there will always be a good Linux distro including them!

Shameless plug: Heard of Doctor's without Borders? Who hasn't! But how about Engineers without Borders? [http://www.ewb-usa.org/] A chance for those of us that don't write F/OSS to give back to the world community!

I don't know if that was a joke or not, but if you need LaTeX ona a LiveDVD you can use Quantian. I just downloaded the 0.6.9.3 (or try an older version for a LiveCD) and it' quite impressive. It also has AucTeX for Emacs and a bunch of other math packages I don't really use.

Yes, Quantian, which is based on ClusterKnoppix.

• R, including several add-on packages (such as tseries, RODBC, coda, mcmcpack, gtkdevice, rgtk, rquantlib, qtl, dbi, rmysql), out-of-the box support for the powerful ESS modes for XEmacs as well as the Ggobi visualisation program;
• A complete teTeX, TeX, and LaTeX setup for scientific publishing, along with TeXmacs and LyX for wysiwyg editing;
• Perl and Python with loads of add-ons, plus ruby, tcl, Lua, and Scientific and Numeric Python;
• The Emacs and Vim editors, as well as Gnumeric, kate, Koffice, jed, joe, nedit and zile;
• Octave, with add-on packages octave-forge, octave-sp, octave-epstk, and matwrap;
• Computer-algebra systems Maxima, Pari/GP, GAP, GiNaC and YaCaS;
• the QuantLib quantitative finance library including its Python interface;
• GSL, the Gnu Scientific Library (GSL) including example binaries;
• The GNU compiler suite comprising gcc, g77, g++ compilers;
• the OpenDX, Plotmtv, and Mayavi data visualisation systems;
• it includes apcalc,aribas,autoclass,

From the linked BBC article:
Mercury Messenger carries seven scientific instruments to characterise the properties of its target planet.
Not sure what OS the software is running on, but it's not Quantian.

You can always get Quantian, a Knoppix variant custom-tailored for scientific computing. It drops OOo, The Gimp and other pretty things for big-number-crunching tools like Octave, R, Gretl et cetera. It also includes a couple of LaTeX editors, plus two WYSIWYG editors that compose TeX, LyX and TeXMacs.

Sure, it doesn't have a 2.6 kernel yet, but the guy is fast, and he's prolly at it already.

While I tend to use LaTeX for everything, I understand that after all, Knoppix is a distro that enables loads of new users to try Linux for the first time and so on. They are not going to use LaTeX. Otoh, LaTeX (and a flurry of other scientific applications) would benefit from their own liveCD. And you know what? It exists!!!! It's called Quantian, and hopefully, a new version (based on Knoppix 3.4) will be out soon. Loads of math/engineering programs, TeX, LyX, Texmacs, scipy... Unfortunately, this project is not as visible as Knoppix (it's a derivative, after all).

Due to work reasons, I have to use a number of numerical packages, such as Octave, GNU R (I don't feel like typing URLs; use google), python, and other stuff (like yacas, maxima, lyx/latex, GRASS...). For these purposes, Quantian is a superb Knoppix remaster. With some work files on a USB keyring (or on a website), I have my own personalised desktop to carry around. And I can do OpenMosix as well, should the need arise!

http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html

These would probably be the first people to include such a set of utils. A Knoppix / Debian variant tailored to numerical and quantitative analysis.

uh, hold on a bit before you run out there and conquer the market:

1.quantlib is really used for pricing derivatives and checking the risk profile of options positions. it kicks ass, but i don't think you'll really be able to use it in a real time data feed scenario. i mean, most trading desks (i'm talking professionals not mangy ass day traders) only use something like quantlib once or twice a day. it just takes too long to calculate the greeks (especially the vega) since it's usually done numerically.

2. if you do want to play around with quantlib in a way that is much superior to trying to integrate it with octave and gnuplot (talk about the lego-land approach!!), try this R Quantlib.

3. don't know what you want to do exactly, but probably something like LinuxTrader would be plenty for your needs. what you really need is an efficient way to display a lot of news and quotes. anything else is probably overkill. i mean, what do you really think you're going to do anyway???