[OSGeoLive] Will there be an ARM version of the osgeo live?

Mon Feb 7 11:19:57 PST 2022

Hi Cameron -

   thank you for bringing this up -- I have written extensively in IRC 
chat on this topic at least twice since 2009. The technical details are 
not that difficult, but not easy to list exhaustively without some 
effort. More from a marketing and user-advocate point of view, I think 
that it can be summed up very well, as follows:

   the osgeolive QGis stack, all the plugins and associated services, 
connected in a functional way, can be thought of as a graph.

   similarly, all the web-facing services, all the plugins and 
associated services, connected with their dependancies in terms of the 
dot-deb or installer script that installs them, can also be thought of 
as a graph

   the difference between those two graphs.. what is ONLY in one graph 
versus what is ONLY in the other graph, are in fact, a very decent first 
aproximation of the difference between the osgeolive that we ship now, 
versus what a "cloud" osgeolive would be

   I believe Angelos knows this very well, and I welcome input or 
repudiation, from any community member

   thank you and best regards from Berkeley, Calif    --Brian M 
Hamlin    /  MAPLABS  /

On 2/7/22 10:43 AM, Cameron Shorter wrote:
> Something which is getting more-and-more feasible every year is to run 
> OSGeo-Live as a virtual machine in the cloud.
> We actually managed to do this back in 2009 
> <http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com/2009/10/try-open-source-geospatial-desktop.html>, 
> but the partners working on it got stuck in the following release.
> Someone might want to take another look at this approach?
>
> On Tue, 8 Feb 2022 at 01:47, James Klassen <jklassen at sharedgeo.org 
> <mailto:jklassen at sharedgeo.org>> wrote:
>
>     There was discussion awhile back about supporting ARM for
>     Raspberry Pi and similar SBCs that came to the same conclusion
>     that it would take more developer resources that were available.
>
>     OSGeo Live is meant to “just work” to encourage new users explore
>     the software without having to first face the learning curve of
>     getting it installed and configured correctly.  That is a lot more
>     difficult to accomplish when users face to face the variations
>     inherent in running different architectures.
>
>     Most, but not all of the packages that go into OSGeo Live are
>     available on ARM (are in Ubuntu-GIS and Debian-GIS or are platform
>     agnostic and install the same files as on x86).  So, technically
>     it isn’t too far fetched.  But, if I remember correctly, pain
>     points are testing and documentation.  I’d venture a guess that,
>     by far, nearly all of the developer time on OSGeo Live is spent on
>     testing and documentation.
>
>     Another issue with ARM is that while the user space is the
>     same/similar across ARM devices, a bootable image (like we do with
>     x86) would have to be tailored to each device.  Maybe there would
>     be a way to just provide a user space and have the user provide
>     the matching version of Ubuntu for their machine.  Maybe the whole
>     thing could be built into a snap or flatpak or appimage.  It would
>     still be a different experience than we’ve traditionally had for
>     x86 which raises documentation and ease of use concerns.
>
>
>     I’m also a bit surprised the M1 Macs can’t run x86 OSes in
>     emulation.  There were programs that emulated a PC to allow 68k
>     and PowerPC  era Macs to run DOS/Windows.
>
>     On Sat, Feb 5, 2022 at 04:06 Angelos Tzotsos
>     <gcpp.kalxas at gmail.com <mailto:gcpp.kalxas at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>         Dear Barend,
>
>         We do not have an ARM version. This would require more developer
>         resources than we currently have, so there is currently no
>         plan to
>         support this architecture.
>
>         Best,
>         Angelos
>
>         On 2/2/22 01:24, Kobben, Barend (UT-ITC) wrote:
>         > For installation in the Parallels virtual machine on a new
>         MacPro (running on the Apple silicon architecture), an ARM
>         version instead of an Intel version is needed. Is that
>         available, or will in be...? Or are there alternative ways to
>         get it running on a Mac M1...?
>         >
>         > --
>         > Barend Köbben
>         > Senior Lecturer – ITC-GIP & ATLAS, University Twente
>         > PO Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede (The Netherlands)
>         > +31-(0)53 4874 253 / room 1-065 ITC
>         >
>         > _______________________________________________
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>         > osgeolive at lists.osgeo.org <mailto:osgeolive at lists.osgeo.org>
>         > https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/osgeolive
>
>
>         -- 
>         Angelos Tzotsos, PhD
>         President
>         Open Source Geospatial Foundation
>         http://users.ntua.gr/tzotsos
>
>         _______________________________________________
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>         https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/osgeolive
>
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>
>
> -- 
> Cameron Shorter
> Technical Writer, Google
>
>
>
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