[Live-demo] Introduction

[Alex Mandel]

Jonathan,

I understand the point, and maybe what we're searching for here is the
appropriate way to direct the interest. Personally I've been running a
64bit workstation since 2005 exclusively on Ubuntu. I use the ubuntugis
repos all the time to pull 64bit builds of most of the desktop
applications, and 64bit jvm for running java apps.

There is a high likelihood that our build actually works in a 64bit
environment without any tweaks (maybe a few apps that are from source
might get stuck). Given that, the OSGeo-live project's focus is
specifically on the DVD, USB, VM usage as a way to introduce people to
the software.

If you would like to build and distribute a VM or DVD of the same stuff
for 64bit go for it. If it's done with our scripts and in coordination
with us we can also host the downloads. At some point it may even be
easy for us to build both at the same time(I'm researching it right
now). But given the larger footprint of 64 bit binaries and the
likelihood of incompatible machines we just don't have the people to
push that direction. Maybe we can make an svn branch to hold an minor
adjustments needed for 64bit building and you can work in there?

Also you might want to look at our friend project http://gisvm.com/
where the focus is a GIS workstation build more than a demo. Or at
Poseidon Linux http://sites.google.com/site/poseidonlinux/ which is
starting to work with us too. This really starts to get at the idea of a
prepackage distro for GIS workstations. We are not a distro and never
plan to be, though OSGeo metapackages for ubuntu are not out of the
question (One click install of everything).

Thanks,
Alex


On 11/23/2010 02:02 PM, Jonathan Roach wrote:
> Hamish,
> 
> You make a very compelling point.
> 
> however my intentions of experimenting with a 64 bit environment are to assist people buying estate of the art hardware to get their value for the money.
> 
> now days users are buying estate of the art computer hardware (computers with multiple processing power), but there are very few software applications that can support a 64 bit environment. most application currently available can work in a 64 bit environment but they still do not use effectively the hardware resources available. Mostly, the Open Source Community have higher chances of making 64-bit software application. This will mean value for money for the low budget customer. Because developers of open source community are not subject to the politics and marketing strategies that a private company is subject to, Open source Software effectively working in a 64 bit environment will give the open source community the upper hand over the private companies making open source application more appealing to a low budget customer and others in the hunt for new software technologies.
> 
> I work for a local government and our service provider, for mapping purposes, is Pitney Bowes MapInfo. MapInfo is great product but we have reach it's limits, as organizations that i work for is becoming more aware of how important GIS is for its core business, request are increasing. these are logical and reasonable requests but the program MapInfo has reached its limit and we are starting to run out of solutions. When we brought this to the attention of the Pitney Bowes Mapinfo, they simply did not have an answer and our request was thrown to the too hard basket. because they are not concern with problems of customer where they are not making any money on.
> 
> and so as Cameron Shorter has made a point on several presentations of his we are stack with that vendor. but if open source software could offer a more appealing solution, a low budget customer, such as ourselves, could benefit from these solutions offered by the Open Source community, plus the support from companies such as Lisa-soft, would make it very appealing to customers.
> 
> specially if it attracts the eye of a technically knowledgeable IT Manger of any organization who is starting to run out of options.
> 
> but In response to your statements, Hamish, the live DVD is a demonstration only, if a customer signs up to purchase the software from the Open Source Community they will be installing it locally in their machines. not running it from the DVD.
> 
> I think the Live DVD is a great idea for demonstration purposes only but nothing else. but it should provide the option of a 64-bit environment. if the software can operate well in the 64 bit environment then as you well state it, Hamish, 32 bit PCs will be around for the next 5-7 years, working in a 64-bit environment puts the Open Source Community Software Applications 5 to 7 years ahead of the market making us yet more appealing to not only to the low budget user but also to every one else.
> 
> and for individual in the GIS industry opens a door of knowledge that not many of us would currently dare to step into because it is too risky.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Jonathan K. Roach
> Geographic and Land Information Systems Officer
> Division: Land Use and Sustainability
> Branch: Strategic Land Use Planning (Design and Technical Group/GIS)
> Manly Council
> Phone: (02) 9976 - 1612
> E-Mail: jonathan.roach at manly.nsw.gov.au
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hamish [mailto:hamish_b at yahoo.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, 23 November 2010 3:13 PM
> To: live-demo at lists.osgeo.org; Jonathan Roach
> Cc: oo7bone at bigfoot.com
> Subject: Re: [Live-demo] Introduction
> 
> Jonathan wrote:
>> Particularly I would like to test in a 64 bit environment
> 
> Hi and welcome.
> 
> 
> for what it's worth & as is my understanding, despite common
> perceptions and advertising campaigns, 64bit is not magically
> faster and better than 32bit. fundamentally it just means that
> the addressable space goes from 2^32 bytes (a couple of gigs) to
> 2^64 (computer with that limit hasn't been invented yet).
> Integers can count higher by using twice the number of bits to
> store themselves in, and that's all.
> 
> So 64bit is great for dealing with huge geo-data files (LFS),
> although most modern 32bit operating systems can deal with eg
>> 2gb files. WindowsXP famously doesn't reach it's theoretical
> limit of 4gb RAM, and the program saving/reading the file has
> to use the right variable type (eg off_t) in the memory address
> to be 32bit LFS-capable as well.
> 
> actually if huge files/memory requirements are not an issue for
> you, you might very well be better off sticking with 32-bit as
> it only needs to push half of the I/O bandwidth!
> 
> On the other hand, while amd64 CPUs runs 32bit quite well, the
> CPUs will, with time, be tuned for 64bit instruction sets.
> ..maybe the increased number of registers helps more than
> anything else to unclog processing bottlenecks?
> 
> 
> So, unless working with really massive datasets is a goal for
> our demo DVD, I'm not entirely convinced that it gains us
> anything useful, but it does make the dvd unusable on xx% of
> the computers out there, and like it or not, 32 bit PCs will
> be around for the next 5-7 years.
> 
> 
> 
> regards,
> Hamish