Someone gave a link to a very large list of repositories but I have forgotten where that was.

What is the largest list of repositories known to man? Would like to just search it using synaptic, as an alternative to using a search engine.

First of all, repositories for what? What distro are you talking about?

Second, lists of repositories like you describe are not usually intended to be loaded willy-nilly into your system. They're simply references of locations that are available, and usually some kind of listing of their contents. The user is expected to use reason and due-diligence to select the ones that are appropriate for him.

For one thing, I can't imagine how long it would take to have all those repositories updated at the same time. Not to mention the system problems that may ensue if you aren't careful to select sources that are compatible with your setup.

Really, you don't need large repositories, or a large number of repositories. What you need are repositories that contain what you want to use. Your distro's standard repositories are going to contain 90%+ of what you need already. The reasonable thing to do for the rest is to first find the programs you want to use, then find a repository that offers them (check the homepage of the project itself first, they occasionally serve up their own or direct you to recommended sources), and add those to your personal repository list once you're sure they are appropriate for your use.

Either ubuntu, debian or vectorlinux (slackware). But would consider switching to absolutely any linux if specialized software is only available for that.

Sure. But if you read carefully it is only for search purposes initially:

That is alright, one update is enough for me, it is for occasional search purposes only.

This does not work very well for me. Google has too low signal-to-noise ratio, and may be intentionally censoring some little-known sources.

You are probably better off listing the software you need and then ask which distro best supports it. Other than doing that, David is pretty much right.

Alright. Currently I want open-source simulation for low-frequency and very high-frequency electromagnetics, and also a demonstration of how macroscopic electromagnetics map to quantum effects.

Covering all frequencies would be very unlikely from a single piece of software given the open-source constraint. Don't you think using google search would take ages to find a comprehensive collection of software for such purposes?

My suggestion is to directly contact an expert in the field of electromagnetics (perhaps at a local university?) to discuss the "tools of the trade."

Ask yourself, in the unlikely event that a professor of electromagnetics is browsing LinuxQuestions.org looking for discussions of his favorite topic, is a thread titled "The largest collection of repositories" going to catch his eye? I'd suggest editing your title thread to reflect your actual query.

If it were me, I would contact this guy:

He is into open source and Natural Low Frequency Electromagnetics. Maybe not the specific area you are looking at (you did not specify further) but it is a place to start(second hit on google) and has a higher probablity of sucess than this thread(as it exists).

Thanks. Snowpine, my query is not just this particular one. It has happened many times that I was looking for software for a certain idea and it was not in the full repos of standard linux's.

My query is really "how do I query" (a large database of open-source software)?

You can try sourceforge for common use software but for scientific stuff(or any other very specialized area) you pretty much need to find somebody in that specific area to point you in the correct direction.

I still don't really understand the question (I think it's quicker and easier to contact an expert in the field for advice), but perhaps you'll find this link handy?

http://www.rpmfind.net/

RPM based distros (Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, Scientific Linux, etc.) are fairly common in science/academia.

Given the type of SW you are after, definitely this distro https://www.scientificlinux.org/.
If it's not in their repo already, they can probably tell you where to find it.

NB: as post #2 implies, be careful adding repos, as many have the same SW, but different & (often) incompatible versions with each other...

Hi,

Just want to point out that SL has very little scientific libs/programs packaged for it. It's mostly just a "stable", "common" platform that we compile stuff by hand on. There is very little (although it seems to be increasing) packaged for SL that is not directly from RHEL.

I've always found Debian to be a good choice for prepackaged scientific libs/programs.

Cheers,

Evo2.

So nobody knows a search engine for free software? Nobody knows a large collection of repositories to search into? Only google, sourceforge, or online acquaintances?

I don't want fish, I want to learn fishing because next time it will NOT be scientific software.

Umm, you want something offline?

You've had many good suggestions already. But just to be explicit:

http://freshmeat.net
http://packages.debian.org
http://sourceforge.net
http://code.google.com

Evo2.

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One Site I use is

Ibiblio

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