[mapserver-users] beginner getting started

[Puneet Kishor]

Dan,

All reasonable questions deserve a reasonable answer ;-)

On Monday, November 11, 2002, at 01:05  PM, Martin, Daniel wrote:

> As Linux users are quick to point out to Windows users, install base 
> isn't a measure of quality or features.
>  
> I'd really like to know what the shortcomings of MapServer on Windows 
> are.  What makes MapServer rock on RH?  Why doesn't it rock as much on 
> Windows?
>

mapserver by itself works just as well on both Windows and most all 
versions/variations of Unix. Windows actually is a pretty good 
opensource development platform, and if you throw cygwin in the mix, 
you get most everything *nix has as well.

There are a few key differences, however --

1. Perl/Mapscript support -- does not work on Windows afaik.
2. Windows doesn't come with compilers, so you have to shell out for a 
commercial compiler (MS). Most all *nix come with the c compiler (gcc) 
pre-installed. Otherwise you have to depend on someone else preparing 
the binaries for you. Which means, you can't really experiment with 
various configurations of mapserver at will unless you have the 
compiler.

The above two, in my view, are perhaps the most significant areas in 
which *nix wins over Win (!).

3. If you need Postgres/PostGIS support you need *nix, or Cygwin 
(although there are rumors of a Win build for Postgres, I have not seen 
it).
4. Some other *nix niceties can be useful depending on the situation... 
for example, I can work on my Linux box remotely using ssh... of 
course, for Win there are other workarounds -- you could vpn. The *nix 
philosophy is different -- there are a lot of small, small programs 
that can work in tandem and do things for you, and your application can 
get well integrated into the system. But, there are equal number of 
creative solutions and utils in Win as well.

At this time mapserver seems to be equally popular with both *nix and 
Win users (and Mac users, ahem!). For most part, it rocks just as well 
on Win. The general advice is (most preferable first) --

go with what is most appropriate,
go with what you know,
go with what you can afford,
go with what you believe in,
go with what you are forced to work with