Bio-Linux is an ideal system for scientists handling and analysing biological data.
Bio-Linux 6.0 is a fully featured, powerful, configurable and easy to maintain bioinformatics workstation. Bio-Linux provides more than 500 bioinformatics programs on an Ubuntu Linux 10.04 base. There is a graphical menu for bioinformatics programs, as well as easy access to the Bio-Linux bioinformatics documentation system and sample data useful for testing programs. You can also install Bio-Linux packages to handle new generation sequence data types.
You can install Bio-Linux on your machine, either as the only operating system, or as part of a dual-boot setup which allows you to use your current system and Bio-Linux on the same hardware.
Bio-Linux also runs Live from the DVD or a USB stick. This runs in the memory of your machine and does not involve installing anything. This is a great, no-hassle way to try out Bio-Linux, demonstrate or teach with it, or to work with when you are on the move.
Bio-Linux is built on open source systems and software, and so is free to to install and use. See What's new on Bio-Linux 6.0. Also, check out the 2006 paper on Bio-Linux and open source systems for biologists.
Getting Bio-Linux is simple. Just download the image, burn it to a DVD or USB stick and boot the machine from that media.
Running Bio-Linux as a live system
You can run Bio-Linux by booting your computer from the memory stick. To do this, you need to set the machine to boot from a USB port.
On common computers, you can press the F12 key as the machine is starting up. This loads up a menu allowing you to choose a boot device for that session. When you want to run a Bio-Linux Live Session or install Bio-Linux from the memory stick, simply choose the option: boot from a USB device.
If you wish to set this as a permanent option, then you can press F2 instead of F12 as the machine is starting up. This will allow you to configure the BIOS of your computer to establish an order of devices to boot from. You can make the USB memory stick the first device on the list. After this, your machine will always look first into USB ports for USB devices and will boot from them if they are bootable.
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