Quantian OS was a remastering of Knoppix/Debian for computational sciences. The environment was self-configuring and directly bootable CD/DVD that turns any PC or laptop (provided it can boot from cdrom/DVD) into a Linux workstation.^{[citation needed]} Quantian also incorporated clusterKnoppix and added support for openMosix, including remote booting of light clients in an openMosix terminal server context permitting rapid setup of a SMP cluster computer.

Numerous software packages for usual or scientific aims come with Quantian. After the installation, total package volume is about 2.7 GB (For the detailed package list see: List of all the available packages).

The packages for "home users" include:

• KDE, the default desktop environment and their components
• XMMS, Kaffeine, xine media players
• Internet access software, including the KPPP dialer, ISDN utilities and WLAN
• The Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox and Konqueror web browsers
• K3b, for CD (and DVD) management
• The GIMP, an image-manipulation program
• Tools for data rescue and system repair
• Network analysis and administration tools
• OpenOffice.org
• Kile, Lyx

Additionally, some of the scientific applications/programs in Quantian are such like:

• R, statistical computing software
• Octave, a Matlab clone
• Scilab, another Matlab clone
• GSL, GNU Scientific Library
• Maxima computer algebra system
• Python programming language with Scipy
• Fityk curve fitter
• Ghemical for computational chemistry
• Texmacs for wysiwyg scientific editing
• Grass geographic information system
• OpenDX and MayaVi data visualisation systems
• Gnuplot, a command-line driven interactive data and function plotting utility
• LabPlot, an application for plotting of data sets and functions

• Quantian Home Page
• While discontinued, available without support on this archiveOS page