[Live-demo] Rethinking osgeo-live

[Brian Hamlin]

this is breathtakingly unrealistic :-)

The trick to my mind is synergy and incremental advances, ready to  
couple with substantial advancements when they occur. There is no  
model in FOSS for a 'grand plan' sort of execution as suggested  
here.. on any number of levels

with that said, it is the role of the thinker to examine all  
assumptions, on that score, well done :-)

with regards to 'hardware signatures' I stand by the most basic free/ 
libre software principles, and there are many many thousands of very  
capable programmers who do as well.

Now, if you suggested high-end gaming version of major FOSS software  
packages, you would  get my attention!!

best regards from "just north" of Silicon Valley
   -Brian


On Oct 24, 2012, at 3:08 PM, Barry Rowlingson wrote:

> 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

--
Brian Hamlin
OSGeo California Chapter
415-717-4462 cell