One of my cousins, a fire destroyed their building and everything in it. All chemistry classes have been suspended as they scramble to get lab equipment and move it into an empty building so they can continue their studies. They need everything... not fancy stuff, but the basics. Glassware. Refrigerators. And (I am guessing) computers... and software.

I'm not sure what they need, if anything. I'm not sure if they need to run proprietary software for some specific fancy lab machines (but they no longer have any fancy lab machines, so I am guessing "not right now"). Bea reports that they have not really used computers in the chem department in the past, but we wonder if this is due to software being downright too expensive - most of the students at the university can't afford computers, so this is definitely talking about shared computer use in classrooms and labs. There are some nice chemistry programs packaged in Fedora that would be useful; that list is probably out of date, and there are probably more programs out there. For instance, Avogadro, a molecular editor (below).

So this might be an opportunity to help by getting an university-branded Fedora chemistry Remix on some machines in the new building, so that they don't have to pay ridiculous amounts of money for proprietary programs. Might be an opportunity to help. We don't know if they need it, we don't know what they need, we don't know if they'll even be receptive to the prospect of free software, we don't know if they have computers for their buildings...

However, spinning up a remix prototype is quick, so I'm going to toss one together to give Bea and her professors and classmates an idea of what that might look like. I've got some free time on Wednesday and over the weekend, so I need suggestions for packages to include (or software that isn't yet packaged but should be included, since I can include non-packaged stuff on account of this being a remix). If nothing else, it's something that interested students can explore while they, y'know, have no classes to take.

I will be pulling packages into the kickstart file off this list, so either add to it (if you have Fedora wiki edit privs) or post comments here (if you don't) and I'll put everything there that fits in, do a quick rebranding test to slap the uni logo on, redo the default bookmarks file, check to see if the software works, and ship it off for them to try and holler back about.