Why work so hard to create yet another Linux distro for bioinformatics?

And a good question it is There are a number of effort out there to do such a thing:

• BioBrew / ROCKS' Bio roll
• BioKnoppix
• BioPuppy
• DNALinux
• NEBC Bio-Linux
• Vigyaan
• VLinux

Most of them fail for my needs on one or more of the following points:

• In many cases, they include out-dated applications or out-dated versions of currently used applications.
• Some of them are targeting a specific audience, like structural chemists.
• Very few of them are including a complete documentation package, not only to describe the applications and their use but also to help out a user to select the proper tool for the question to answer.
• Most of them lack applications in the forefront of integrative biology and/or high throughput transcriptomics and genomics.
• Some of them do not seem to have active support.
• Some of them are very specialized, needing a cluster to be used effectively (i.e. Bio roll).

After having a hard look at all of them, I came to the conclusion that I needed to start from scratch to build a bioinformatics distro for teaching my students as well as provide a starting point to build their own bioinformatics server.

— Sylvain Foisy 2010/04/18 14:10