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Created August 9, 2026 16:27
Open Experimentation with Debian Live. Encapsulated Bootable Environments for Reproducible Research.

Open Experimentation with Debian Live

Encapsulated Bootable Environments for Reproducible Research

Introduction

Packaging experiments as bootable Debian Live environments offers a practical approach to scientific research by enabling fully self-contained experimental setups. Traditional experimental setups typically involve running experiments on shared computers with a static operating system, where researchers develop and maintain their experiment software separately while relying on the underlying system remaining stable over time. This conventional approach often leads to dependency conflicts, version incompatibilities, and difficulties in reproducing experiments as the host system evolves or differs between institutions.

In contrast, this methodology addresses common challenges in research reproducibility, administrative overhead, and experimental integrity by packaging each complete experimental environment as a bootable operating system image. Rather than maintaining experiment code that dep