(Please see below at note [1] for a note on the posting. Thanks!)


Executive Summary:
------------------
    Quantian 0.5.9.4 adds many more packages on top of the previous
    release. Among the new packages are 50 new CRAN/BioConductor packages for
    R, as well as a variety of other packages such as pcb, gpsim, gnucap,
    xcircuit, transcalc, xd3d, QtiPlot, the Alliance VHDL and more. Packages
    such as Gnumeric and LyX are re-introduced, and a few small packaging bugs
    have been corrected. The total size of the iso is now 1.74gb corresponding
    to about 5.5gb uncomressed. 



===================================
Announcing Quantian release 0.5.9.4
===================================


I   What is it?
---------------

    Quantian is a remastering of Knoppix, the self-configuring and directly
    bootable cdrom/dvd that turns any pc or laptop into a full-featured Linux
    workstation, and clusterKnoppix, which adds support for openMosix. 
    However, Quantian differs from (cluster)Knoppix by adding a large set 
    of programs of interest to applied or theoretical workers in 
    quantitative or data-driven fields. 

    See http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html for more details.

    
II  What is new?
----------------

    o Fourth release based on Knoppix 3.4 with many changes from both new and
      updated packages, still based on Knoppix 3.4 and the clusterKnoppix
      release from May 10 with kernel 2.4.26 with the 'testing status'
      openMosix patch as well as a non-openMosix kernel 2.6.6 -- this may
      become the final '0.5.9.*' release and get relabelled 0.6 unless new
      bugs are found.

    o New Quantian software includes
      - another 50 GNU R packages from CRAN and BioConductor provided
        unparalled depth for statistical computing with a total of 440
        R packages;
      - re-introduced Gnumeric as well as LyX and LyX-Qt;
      - pcb to complement GNU eda as suggested by Chris Steigies;
      - a variety of astronomy-related packages suggested by Gopal Narayanan:
        saoimage, gpsim, gnucap, oregano, icom, xcircuit, vipec, xsmc-calc, 
        transcalc, setiathome, tkseti, xplanet, xplanet-images;
      - two new visualisation packages: xd3d and QtiPlot;
      - Alliance, a complete CAD tool and library for VLSI;
      - several fixes suggested or provided by Marco Caliari, included a 
        boot splash screen and improved minirt24/minirt26 boot images;
      - header packages for atlas3 and lam are now included
      - plus lots of fancy GL screensavers;

    o Total size is now about 1.74gb for the compressed iso image,
      corresponding to more than 5.5gb of uncompressed software;

    o As the underlying kernel is unchanged, the cdrom size version of
      0.5.9.2, as well as the small 7gb bootable cdrom provided by Marco
      Caliari can still be used to boot this image if no bootable dvd is 
      available;

    o Now with three main download sites:
      -- at University of Washington in Seattle, Washington:
            http://www.analytics.washington.edu/downloads/quantian/
         which also provides bittorrents and bittorrent monitors:
            http://www.analytics.washington.edu:6969/
      -- at Debian's Alioth site (hosted in California ?):
            http://quantian.alioth.debian.org/
      -- and now also from Greg Warnes' machine research.warnes.net
         hosted at the CS department at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut:
            http://research.warnes.net/downloads/quantian/CURRENT/
    
    o And of course still available:the mailing lists for Quantian

      Following the 0.4.9.3 release, a Quantian project was opened on
      alioth.debian.org.  So far the only use of the alioth infrastructure
      has been the creation of two mailing lists

        quantian-announce	  for announcements, intended to be low volume
        quantian-general	  for general discussions about Quantian

      Please go to     

        http://alioth.debian.org/mail/?group_id=1425

      for subscription info etc., and start using the quantian-general lists
      for general questions, comments, suggestions or discussions about 
      Quantian.

      Quantian-general is subscribed to quantian-announce, so you only need
      to subscribe to one (but can of course subscribe to both).

      I also set the Reply-To: for this message to
      quantian-general@lists.alioth.debian.org   so that discussions can be
      continued on the list.

    o See http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian/changelog.html for details.


III Where do I get it?
----------------------

    o Downloads are available from the three main hosts already listed 
      above:
            http://www.analytics.washington.edu/downloads/quantian/
            http://quantian.alioth.debian.org/
            http://research.warnes.net/downloads/quantian/CURRENT/
      one of which already has torrents running on 0.5.9.4:
            http://www.analytics.washington.edu:6969/

    o European mirrors, bittorrent site and cdrom vendors will hopefully
      catch up over the next few days. See 

	    http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/quantian.html
 
      for download info.

    o As with the previous releases, dvd/cdrom vendors should have pre-made
      offerings available within a few days.
    

IV  Known Bugs
--------------

    o cdrdao is not setuid root, should get fixed in the next release.


V   Other items
---------------

    o Mailing lists have been created, see above.

    o Feedback / poll on package additions or removal

      As always, I welcome comments and suggestions about programs to be
      added or removed. Existing Debian packages get pushed to the front of
      the line.

      Please send feedback, questions, comments, ... to the 
      
	quantian-general@lists.alioth.debian.org

      list to maximise the number of eyes glancing at any one question.
      For the same reason, the reply-to address for this announcement is set
      to the quantian-general list.


[1] Note

    This email is sent to those whose email addresses are in my quantian
    mail folder due to prior emails, plus LWN and DWN who had run previous
    announcements, and as suggested, the openmosix-general, clusterknoppix
    and debian-knoppix lists. Anybody who considers this unwanted is kindly
    asked to send me a private mail and I will immediately remove the
    corresponding alias entry. 


Best regards,  Dirk


-- 
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
                                                -- Groucho Marx