[Live-demo] Rethinking osgeo-live

[Basques, Bob (CI-StPaul)]

All, 

I've been trying to come up with a similar approach to things, but looking at it from the product side of things.  Working more towards a business angle.  This pre-packaging seems like s good spot in a distribituion pipline to monetize things for support of further package development.

Bobb



>>  -----Original Message-----
>>  From: live-demo-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:live-demo-
>>  bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Barry Rowlingson
>>  Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2012 5:08 PM
>>  To: live-demo at lists.osgeo.org
>>  Subject: [Live-demo] Rethinking osgeo-live
>>  
>>  I've not really thought this through, but I'll put it out there
>>  for discussion...
>>  
>>  Would the effort spent on creating the osgeo-live disc be better
>>  spent creating a 'portable' set of compiled applications, for
>>  Linux, Mac, and Windows platforms?
>>  
>>  The advantage would be that a user wanting to try something out
>>  would just copy the bits they wanted to their PC, and use their
>>  existing operating system. An installer would just copy what the
>>  user wanted and handle dependencies (much like osgeo4w, but
>>  multi-platform).
>>  
>>  It would also be more likely to be usable on machines with a
>>  locked-down boot sequence. Our central IT people supply desktops
>>  with passworded BIOS settings and HD-before-DVD boot sequence.
>>  They also physically lock the cases. Killjoys.
>>  
>>  There would also be no need for admin privileges - something that
>>  blights system package management systems like apt and rpm.
>>  
>>  Is it also true that in the very near future PCs will have some
>>  kind of trusted boot system? So that alternate operating systems
>>  would require signing (or I read something about a signed mini-
>>  bootloader being developed to possibly get round this...). Will
>>  that effect live DVD boots? That could be a pain...
>>  
>>  The disadvantages:
>>  
>>   Loss of total control - we wouldn't know exactly what OS the
>>  programs were going onto, so documentation might look wrong.
>>  
>>   Binary compatibility - how can you ensure your binaries work
>>  with assorted Linux versions? That might be the show-stopper
>>  here, although I'm pretty sure I've recently installed Linux
>>  software from one-size-fits-all binaries. Would the only
>>  compatibility be to do with libc and the kernel? I envisage
>>  practically everything being on there, including things like the
>>  Qt library and a JVM.
>>  
>>   There would be a need to re-tool all the osgeo-live development
>>  chain, and write an installer.
>>  
>>   There would be three versions - Linux, Windows, Mac (or four if
>>  anyone wants to compile for OpenSolaris...)
>>  
>>  I just think there's greater longevity and value in the
>>  distribution of a collection of ready-to-run, run-anywhere
>>  packages than a live boot disk these days.
>>  
>>  Thoughts?
>>  
>>  Barry
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