APBioKnoppix Bioinformatics software in a LiveCD

The original APBioBox project was an APBioNet project supported through a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada from 2002-2003 and hosted in the Dept of Biochemistry, National University of Singapore (NUS).

Through collaboration with the Asia Pacific Science and Technology Center (APSTC), Sun Microsystems, this project was expanded to include a BioBox for the Solaris platform, now called Bio-Cluster Grid. Since then, we are looking at expanding the portfolio of platforms supported, as well as to integrate other software and databases from the APAN-APBioNet collaboration, BioMirrors project in the new APBioBox II initiative

In Jul 2004, Dr Derek Kiong introduced Knoppix as a stable, powerful and small-footprint Unix (Debian-based) platform to Dr Tan Tin Wee in a workshop organised by the Institute of Systems Science (ISS), NUS. By September 2004, through Mr Ong Guan Sin, we were able to create a Knoppix remaster template by building software in APBioBox plus other goodies into a prototype APBioKnoppix, as a project for the practical course of LSM2104 module of the Dept of Biochemistry, NUS.

This was expanded into the APBioKnoppix v0.1 beta released for testing at the ASEAN-China Bioinformatics Workshop 17-23 October 2004, Center for Bioinformatics (CBI), Peking University, Beijing, PR China.