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				<h1>AIMS Desktop 

				
<h2 id="welcome-to-aims-desktop">Welcome to AIMS Desktop</h2>

<p><img src="https://desktop.aims.ac.za/images/screen.png" alt="AIMS Desktop Picture" /></p>

<p>AIMS Desktop is a collection of software that allows you to do mathematics and science on your computer easily and efficiently. You need no exising software on your computer, AIMS Desktop installs an entire operating system that you can install standalone, or dual boot with Microsoft Windows or Apple macOS.</p>

<p>It is maintained by AIMS (The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences), a pan-African network of centres of excellence enabling Africa’s talented students to become innovators driving the continent’s scientific, educational and economic self-sufficiency.</p>

<p>AIMS Desktop is free for anyone to use for educational, non-profit or commercial purposes. (See: Software Licences for more information)</p>

<p>See the <a href="https://desktop.aims.ac.za/getting-started/">getting started guide</a> for instructions how to get
it up and running.</p>

<h2 id="acknowledgements">Acknowledgements</h2>

<p>The AIMS Desktop project is maintained by <a href="https://aims.ac.za">AIMS South Africa</a> and
contributors.</p>

<h3 id="meet-the-team">Meet the team.</h3>

<p><span> <img style="float: left; padding-right: 10px;" src="https://desktop.aims.ac.za/images/faces/pipedream.jpg" alt="Photo of Jan" /> <h3> Jan Groenewald </h3>
Jan is the IT Manager at AIMS South Africa and have worked on various forms of AIMS Desktop since 2003.
He conducted the first deployment of desktops at AIMS using Debian Sarge
to Sagemath upstream packaging. Jan maintains AIMS meta-packages and focusses on science software and
software used for academic purposes in the system.
</span></p>

<p><span> <img style="float: left; padding-right: 10px;" src="https://desktop.aims.ac.za/images/faces/highvoltage.jpg" alt="Photo of Jonathan" /> <h3> Jonathan Carter </h3>
Jonathan works part time at AIMS South Africa and maintains the PPA infrastructure, build scripts,
installer packages, this site and settings packages included in AIMS Desktop. Jonathan is currently
a Debian Maintainer in the Debian project. <br /> <br />
</span></p>

<p><span> <img style="relative; float: left; padding-right: 10px;" src="https://desktop.aims.ac.za/images/faces/paddatrapper.jpg" alt="Photo of Kyle" /> <h3> Kyle Robertze </h3>
Kyle does intern work at AIMS and have worked on extensions to improve desktop usability, installer
improvements and documentation. He&rsquo;s also a Debian contributor and maintains packages in the Debian archive. <br /><br />
</span></p>

<h3 id="external-projects">External projects</h3>

<p>AIMS Desktop is built on the shoulders of giants. Here are only some of the projects that it is built on:</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="https://debian.org">Debian project</a> - A large association of developers who build Debian, a general-purpose operating system environment made up of a large collection of free software.</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel">Linux Kernel</a> - The heart of the system that handles all hardware and drivers.</li>
<li><a href="https://calamares.io/about/">Calamares</a> - An independent graphical installer framework.</li>
<li><a href="https://gnome.org">GNOME Desktop Environment</a> - The default desktop environment we ship with AIMS Desktop.</li>
<li><a href="https://jupyter.org/">Jupyter Notebook</a> - A web application that allows you to create and share documents that contain live code, equations, visualizations, and explanatory text.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.python.org/">Python</a> - A powerful programming language that&rsquo;s easy to learn, many programs shipped with AIMS Desktop is written in Python.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.sagemath.org/">Sagemath</a> - Mathematics software that builds on many existing projects including NumPy, SciPy, matplotlib, Sympy, Maxima, GAP, FLINT and R.</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Octave">GNU Octave</a> - A (mostly Matlab Ⓡ compatible) high-level language, primarilyi intended for numerical computations.</li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeXstudio">Texstudo</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox">Firefox</a> - A free web browse that aims to protect you on-line.</li>
</ul>

<!--
### Kafui Odzanga Dake

![Photo of Kafui](/images/faces/kafui.jpg)

Kafui is the IT Manager at AIMS Ghana and have worked on package selection as well as QA on AIMS
Desktop.
-->

			
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