[Live-demo] LiveDVD, Portable GIS, osgeo4w

[Joanne Cook]

Hi All,

I have a slight issue with tying portable gis in too closely with the portableapps project. I think portableapps is great, don't get me wrong, but it means that the onus is always on the developer to sort out upgrades and so on. As I see portable gis as a jumping off point for people to get into open source GIS, I want them to do be able to do their own upgrades, within reason. This is not always possible, as some of the programmes do need significant tweaks to batch files and so on, but in general if they want to load the latest version of qgis for example, it's easy. If I go down the portable apps route most people will need to wait for me to do it. Furthermore, I have plans to "modularise" it, so I don't want to tinker too much with the standard installations.

Yes, it would be nice to shrink the file size, but that's not all that important when memory sticks are so cheap.

Bringing the discussion back to the live-dvd- I like the idea of including it as an exe (which is how I will package the next release), and suggesting people install it if they like what they've seen on the dvd. I guess it would be nice to brand it better- perhaps more in-line with OSGeo, and to try and ensure that it has mostly the same versions of software- where possible. 

Cheers

Jo

-----------------------------------------------------
Joanne Cook
Senior IT Support and Development
Oxford Archaeology (North)
01524 880212
http://thehumanjourney.net

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alex Mandel" <tech_dev at wildintellect.com>
To: "hamish b" <hamish_b at yahoo.com>
Cc: "Joanne Cook" <j.cook at oxfordarch.co.uk>, "Cameron Shorter" <cameron.shorter at gmail.com>, live-demo at lists.osgeo.org
Sent: 03 November 2008 02:55:00 o'clock (GMT) Europe/London
Subject: Re: [Live-demo] LiveDVD, Portable GIS, osgeo4w

Hamish wrote:
>> So portable gis has applications already installed, and
>> would run best from a memory stick, as opposed to the
>> LiveDVD which currently has windows installers?
>  
>> This makes sense.
>> I'm now wondering whether it would make sense for the
>> portable GIS to be distributed via the LiveDVD as well, in
>> order to maximise exposure of portableGIS to new users. (The
>> LiveDVD is being handed out at conferences).
>>
>> "Want to try GeoFOSS on windows now? Go to the
>> portable GIS directory, or for better performance, copy the
>> portableGIS directory onto a memory stick and run from
>> there."
> 
> For live USB on MS-Windows see also Firefox Portable Edition, and more
> generally the other stuff at portableapps.com, e.g. Notepad++ Portable
> Edition:
>   http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
>   http://portableapps.com/apps/development/notepadpp_portable
> 
> 
> unlike Linux LiveDVD-R, I might speculate that the read-onliness of the
> DVD could be a sticky problem on MS-Windows. (but via USB stick might work
> ala portableapps approach)
> 
> 
> ..... and don't forget Mac OSX! IME many academics join FOSS because the
> apps will run natively, while they have to use emulation/dual boot to run
> "market leader" software, which is usually of limited support. For that
> practical reason and a number of social reasons they are very easy
> converts after the required exposure to the available options.
> I would estimate that my dept is >60% apple (mostly biologists).
> 
> 
> Hamish
> 

I agree that aiming for OSGeo projects to build portableapps installs is
a good direction - portableapps has tools to shrink file foot print and
optomize execution on device.

Things like Postgres should be integrated into XAMP which has a nice
service manager.

For mac, there is an example at:
http://www.freesmug.org/portableapps/

Alex




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