Into.the.Void.

It’s been a while now, since May 2006, that me and some others from the local Ioannina LUG are trying to create a new livecd, the Guli LiveCD. This livecd is geared mostly towards students, scientists and developers. It’s geared towards us…it’s something that will make our lives easier while travelling or while visiting a friend or … or … or …

It is Gentoo based, severy influenced by DSL (damn small linux) as well as other minimalistic livecds, but it’s size has grown to a full CD due to the hundreds of applications we wanted to add. There is of course X windows support, with fluxbox as a window manager, but it is not started by default, yet.

There are a few main categories of applications:

There are a lot of networking tools inside this livecd what will help you identify and correct problems inside your network. These include scanners, packet sniffers, tunneling software, and so on…

Scientific applications were included in order for some of us to be able to travel and still have a way to implement a new idea that strikes us. The main interest so far is Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics. Full tex/latex support is included.

Since many of the ILUG members are students of the Computer Science department it was inevitable that many development tools would be included. There is support for many languages (C, fortran, Java, Haskell, prolog, php, python, perl, ruby,etc), with their compilers and debuggers. The full man pages are also kept so that they serve as a reference for those who want them.

Last but not least we have included a lot of tools that could salvage your system in case of an emergency. These are file recovery tools, password reset tools (even for windows) and lots of others.

There are of course applications like firefox, sylpheed, abiword, gnucalc, gaim, skype, etc included on Guli for everyday tasks.

The total number of executables on this LiveCD is quite large, a double tab pressing on the console will give you something like this:
Display all 3355 possibilities? (y or n)

And there are more to come…

The current version was released yesterday and it is an anniversary edition for ILUG’s 1 year of existence. You can find more information, full list of packages and the download link about this live cd at ILUG’s forums (currently only in Greek, until Guli gets a proper website).

This liveCD is not geared towards new users who want to see a fancy livecd with XGL and stuff like that. People who have never before used linux might find it a bit diffucult to navigate through the livecd.

We would appreciate any comments/bugs either on the forum or on the bug tracker

Filed by kargig at 15:50 under General, Gentoo, Internet, Linux, Networking, maths
2 Comments | 394 views

At least that’s what an australian academic, Dr Norman Wildberger, says. He says he managed to rewrite the classic geometry theorems and formulas without using trigonometric functions. His book might be worth a look.
From his introduction:

Rational trigonometry
The new form of trigonometry developed here is called rational trigonometry, to distinguish it from classical trigonometry, the latter involving cos θ, sin θ and the many trigonometric relations currently taught to students. An essential point of rational trigonometry is that quadrance and spread, not distance and angle, are the right concepts for metrical geometry (i.e. a geometry in which measurement is involved).
Quadrance and spread are quadratic quantities, while distance and angle are almost, but not quite, linear ones. The quadratic view is more general and powerful. At some level, this is known by many mathematicians. When this insight is put firmly into practice, as it is here, a new foundation for mathematics and mathematics education arises which simplifies Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries, changes our understanding of algebraic geometry, and often simplifies difficult practical problems.
Quadrance measures the separation of points, and spread measures the separation of
lines. It turns out that

quadrance = (distance)^2
spread = ( sin (angle))^2

although the actual definitions used in this text are independent of distance, angle and the trigonometric functions. They are ultimately very simple, based on finite arithmetic and algebra as taught in schools.

no more cosθ and sinθ ? One thing’s for sure…he will be strictly judged by millions of mathematicians for every word he’s written…math people are crazy people and they don’t like others playing smart on them…

good luck to Dr Wildberger…

Filed by kargig at 20:10 under maths
No Comments | 369 views