[alberto]

Hello,

I have recently tested one new project which is being developed by Novell/SUSE and is called SUSE Studio (www.susestudio.com). Studio is essentially a web frontend which allows you to build a personalized image (installable live cd/dvd, USB, vm ware, XEN) of openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enteprise, with your own software selection, your configuration and your additional software (RPM's and uploaded binaries).

To see how far it can go, I used it to build a USB live image with OpenFOAM, and indeed it worked perfectly. You can see the description of the steps here, which I put together in some slides with detailed screenshots: http://files.getdropbox.com/u/659842...ioOpenFOAM.pdf

Studio is a free service. At the moment it is in beta stage, and only invited people can use it. However if the OpenFOAM developers are interested, I have a few invitations to give around, and I can send them to you.

I am also looking for a place where to host the images for those who are interested. Currently I only built the 64 bit version, with OpenFOAM 1.5.x.
The required space for an image is of about 2GB in compressed form, which give origin to a fully working openSUSE 11.1 with GNOME, Firefox, OpenOffice, OpenFOAM, enGrid, NETGEN, BLAS, Lapack, GSL, VLC media player, and the standard tools in openSUSE installation which requires slightly more than 4GB on a USB stick. For the curious, yes, paraFoam and paraView work out of the box (see slides ;-))

Let me know your comments.

Best,