[GRASSLIST:183] Re: Considering replacing ESRI

[Thomas Adams]

John,

As a slightly opposing view (and obviously many of your points about 
ARCView & MapInfo are well taken), I wanted to save myself time 
compiling & setup and took the OpenOSX route on a Mac and have not 
experienced the installation problems you have alluded to on Linux. In 
fact, I have not had any problems at all.

The bottom line, is that one size does not fit all. As you point out, in 
the "right shop" GRASS is a great alternative to commercial products, 
depending on what one is trying to achieve. Going the commercial route 
can be quite expensive - it's a matter of choosing one's poison, I suppose.

I use all of these programs at work, but I can continue to work at home 
with GRASS.

Tom


John Doucette wrote:

>If you have a genuine linux/unix/C++ genuis in your shop you probably don't
>need to read further.
>
>If you don't -  I would say the number one reason to stick with ESRI (or
>Mapinfo ...) is that Grass is just too damn hard to set up and learn.
>
>First let me say that I love the idea of open-source.  And that I am not
>giving up on getting Grass going for me.
>
>Watch this group for a while and see how large of a proportion of the
>messages are pleas for help installing Grass.  Contrast that to setting up
>ArcView ...
>
>I don't understand why computer programs are written the way they are today.
>Back in the DOS days programmers designed their own drivers for monitors and
>printers ...  Then along came Windows with every program sharing dll's and
>other program librarys.  F&%k program librarys.  I can still run my old DOS
>programs by by copying a directory of files onto a new machine, erasing the
>read-only attribute, and firing off the progams.  This is because the
>programs are complete in themselves and do not require shared files or
>program libraries.  Sharing is nice to teach to school childern but sucks in
>the program world.  Linux is just as bad as Windows, and maybe worse, when
>it comes to share file dependancies.  Trying to trace out these dependancies
>and to understand them requires a major commitment of time.  This is
>ridiculous to me in that shared librarys might have made sense when hard
>drive space was limited but with the multi-gigabite drives today it would
>not be an issue at all to let each program use as much space as necessary to
>be complete in unto itself.
>
>I do not have a guru to help me but I thought I could get along with a
>little perserverence since I have been spending hours each day figuring out
>computers stuff since my first Commodore 64 in 1982.  Well it has been a
>long struggle and after a year and a half I can do some stuff in Grass.  But
>if I would have spent the same amount of time learning more about ESRI's
>products or MapInfo, I sure would have been much further along.
>
>I ordered the CD version of Grass because I thought I could avoid time
>downloading and maybe make installation easier.  Well the installation I
>have done to date has not been easy, has required much time searching the
>web for help, and pouring through Linux manuals and the poorly written man
>pages that are really good at listing command options but uniformly fail to
>give examples of how to use the commands and options, and chasing down
>dependancies, setting up symbolic links, and decyphering archane error
>messages.
>
>As I said at the beginning - If you have access to very highly qualified
>computer support personnel, and in addition if you can find someone to teach
>your people how to use Grass - then no worries.  But if you don't have these
>things your people will be turning out null product for a very long time
>before proficiency sets in.
>
>{-:  And as I said I love the idea of open source :-}
>
>John
>
>  
>

-- 
Thomas E Adams
National Weather Service
Ohio River Forecast Center
1901 South State Route 134
Wilmington, OH 45177

EMAIL:	thomas.adams at noaa.gov

VOICE:	937-383-0528
FAX:	937-383-0033