[Aust-NZ] Live CDs for the FOSS4G conference and DebianGIS

[Hamish]

Hi,

two things I've been meaning to answer but got swamped with other
things..


1) Providing a consistent computing experience for conference attendees
for workshops and training sessions.

At previous FOSS4Gs there was a Live CD prepared (think Knoppix) and
handed out with all the favourite softwares and sample datasets. Everyone
sticks one of those in the laptop/provided workstation and all work from
the same page. Trying to install stuff on everyone's diverse OSs etc
would take the entire workshop, better to have that all prepackaged and
the same versions etc.

here are some links:
  http://grass.osgeo.org/download/cdrom.php
  http://geomatica.como.polimi.it/software/slaxGIS/index.php

(Markus: any wise comments?)



2) how to start with DebianGIS.
Basically just join the mailing list and say hello. 
  http://wiki.debian.org/DebianGis

don't be fooled by the mailing list address, it just originally grew out
of the grass package efforts and hasn't been updated. The focus there is
mostly to do with technical packaging issues, but there are some user
driven wishlist and priority setting threads from time to time, and a lot
of true experts silently lurking in the corners. You don't have to be a
debian package expert to follow along. I guess like OSGeo it is a nice
cross roads for developers and users of many diverse FOSS4G projects, but
on a lower volume mailing list. ;)

Debian packages are built using upstream source code releases with local
Debian patches applied to make them conform to Debian's strict rules. The
DebianGIS team (lead by Frankie) maintains all those patches and build
scripts in the DebianGIS SVN (see link from above page), and coordinates
problems between Debian QA gatekeepers and the individual projects.
Generally we like to have a senior devel from each project on hand to
work through any packaging issues and do the package edits themselves.


Hamish


ps- last night Google decided to more than double their summer
scholarship funding for OSGeo projects to US$100k, so we should be able
to mentor 20 top quality students (it was very competitive; we still have
many strong candidates who will sadly go unfunded). I guess Google has a
thing for maps.
Woo hoo.



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