Testimonials (by Topic)¶
Open Science¶
The Debian project provides the scientific community with a truly universal operating system. The breadth and quality of its community-driven development and technical support is superior to many other available commercial alternatives. It provides a sound basis for the open science movement.
—– [2011-06-21] Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
[…] NeuroDebian allows both researchers and the public to easily replicate the entire experimental procedure, a feature rendered difficult or often impossible by proprietary software packages that most scientists rely on nowadays. I have been increasingly using NeuroDebian in a Virtual Machine because Linux operating systems are not supported by the university. […] Moreover, powered by NeuroDebian’s openness, I see a reason to publish the full code of our experimental and analysis scripts. [NeuroDebian] makes the goal of open science finally viable.
—– [2011-06-18] Ph.D. student, Laboratories of Biological and Experimental Psychology, K. U. Leuven, Belgium
Standardization¶
The NeuroDebian team taught me a great deal about how to systematize software development for reliable dissemination […] This speaks very highly of the deep skillset and commitment to user support represented in the NeuroDebian project, which will have high impact on the field and help standardize both the analysis and the interpretation of neuroimaging data.
—– [2010-09-16] Research Assistant Professor of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
I am constantly aware that software packaging and supporting user needs on diverse platforms represents a severe burden for developers. The NeuroDebian software platform addresses these problems for a good fraction of production environments in the field, while contributing to research reproducibility through software standardization.
—– [2010-09-09] Post-doctoral researcher, Brain Mind Institute, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
NeuroDebian is playing a key role in the creation of an ``eco-system’’ of open-source solutions for neuroscience […] The standards and practices disseminated by the NeuroDebian project allowed me to start using this tool [PsychoPy] efficiently and rapidly and to contribute back to the project within a few months.
—– [2010-09-15] NiTime developer, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Neurodebian provides us with a consitent way of sotware packaging and upgrades, eliminating tedious compiles and home-brew setups, while seamlessly integrating with the Debian distribution. Excellent and very valuable work, saving costs and difficult to spot errors. High five Michael, Yaroslav and team! Keep them packages coming!
—– [2013-02-06] University Medical Center Utrecht
Virtualization¶
We have found the NeuroDebian VM so easy to us and so simple to maintain that we’re currently in the process of converting some of our workstations to full NeuroDebian installations
—– [2011-06-22] Lincoln Feline Professor, Psychology and Brain Sciences Department
We find the approach taken by NeuroDebian and the progress it made so far very pleasant and promising. […] The NeuroDebian team helped us to improve the quality of our software and of some of our processes by review, constructive suggestions and even software patches. The availability of the NeuroDebian Virtual Machine was instrumental for fast porting of the Psychtoolbox to a 64 bit Linux environment.
—– [2011-06-21] Dipl. Inf., Psychtoolbox lead developer, Department for Cognitive and Computational Psychophysics, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany
I have been using NeuroDebian for my work on multivariate classification of fMRI data […] It is of great value, because I have access to both Windows and Debian OS on my laptop, where I do all my analysis.
—– [2011-06-15] Image Sciences Institute, University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands
I am a heavy user of NeuroDebian-Virtual Machine on Windows 64-bit platform.
—– [2011-06-15] Associate Professor, Graduate School of Decision Science and Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan
[…] I couldn’t believe my great luck when after just an hour or so I had a complete [NeuroDebian] system running and my research was back on track. […] Your service and support are critical to keeping researchers effectively working on their research, rather than on maintenance issues that negatively affect our productivity. […] I was working on versions of AFNI and FSL that were several generations behind […] Now I will always be up-to-date. […] Because I am now running a virtual machine, I can keep my data files [with me].
—– [2011-06-18] Department of Counseling, Education Psychology, and Special Education, Michigan State University, USA
[…] NeuroDebian allows both researchers and the public to easily replicate the entire experimental procedure, a feature rendered difficult or often impossible by proprietary software packages that most scientists rely on nowadays. I have been increasingly using NeuroDebian in a Virtual Machine because Linux operating systems are not supported by the university. […] Moreover, powered by NeuroDebian’s openness, I see a reason to publish the full code of our experimental and analysis scripts. [NeuroDebian] makes the goal of open science finally viable.
—– [2011-06-18] Ph.D. student, Laboratories of Biological and Experimental Psychology, K. U. Leuven, Belgium
[NeuroDebian] makes my lectures on neuroimaging much more convenient and ``hands-on’’ by deploying virtual machines on student’s laptops […] a quick, elegant and cost-free solution, enabling students to work on real fMRI data in no time.
—– [2011-06-15] Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience, Dept. of Neurology, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Germany
brilliant! as promised, all problems are [on their way to being] solved. (well, at least in so far as neuroscience is concerned :) very cool and as pointed out, NeuroDebian lets you try out all the cool toys of neuroscience research with a very straightforward ease of use (esp. with the virtual machine). very nice…keep up the good work!
—– [2010-05-05] Source: NITRC NeuroDebian reviews
[…] Best part for me is that I can run it in a VM without having to worry about replacing my native OS.
—– [2010-05-05] Source: NITRC NeuroDebian reviews
We use NeuroDebian on a daily basis as it provides a stable and versioned software base for analysis. This is critical as it allows us to maintain data provenance, something that is often sorely lacking. Our collaborators who don’t quite have their heads around Linux yet are pointed to the NeuroDebian Virtual Machine, it allows them to run an identical analysis environment to us regardless of where they are or operating system.
—– [2013-02-06] Center for Advanced Imaging, University of Queensland, Australia
I am a dedicated R user … and have a Windows box. But this afternoon I (finally) downloaded and installed NeuroDebian and the VirtualBox, ran AFNI, and generated the files I needed, all within about an hour and a half. […] not bad, considering that I know essentially no Linux/Unix. So here’s a big “thanks!” :)
—– [2012-03-15] Department of Psychology, Washington University
Since I started using a NeuroDebian virtual machine on win64 months ago I am relying more and more on its diverse tools, from population-specific template creation to pipelining the analysis of fMRI, DTI and morphology studies. There is a great chance I will end up working exclusively with NeuroDebian!
—– [2013-02-06] Neuroimaging Research Group, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Deu, Barcelona, Spain