Miniconf-UK/2013/neuroimaging

Mark Hymers & Paul Elliott - Debian in Neuroimaging: A meandering tour

We'll cover the use of Debian in an academic research environment in which many users will have no prior UNIX or programming experience. We'll talk about modifications to desktop environments, why we've made the choices we have, how we deal with remote users, system administration with many identical machines, making the environment homogenous on both desktops and cluster (analysis) machines and various other practical things we've encountered over the years.

Towards the end, I'll talk about some issues which arise which conflict with Debian's normal requirements and possibly pose some questions regarding whether we, as Debian, could reduce the number and complexity of customisations necessary. I'll also discuss the importance of encouraging sane upstream behaviour, possibly with some examples of why this is necessary...