Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote: > > On 19-Oct-08, at 5:30 PM, P Kishor wrote: > >> I have no skin in this game, but I would second the above sentiment. >> While "not free as in beer" should not be as much of a problem as "not >> free as in speech," ignoring Windows is perilous and foolish. Because >> of its lack of architecture diversity and its monolithic nature, >> actually Windows can be a pretty good open source development platform >> because one can actually get past dicking around with installing the >> damn software and get to developing with it. > > This thread is discussin "LiveDVD", right, which is not readily possible > with Windows unless running some sort of VM. But of course, the > solution is to have installers and packaged demos ready to go. That's > the goal of projects like OSGeo4W: > http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/ > > Hopefully those with more Windows experience can help on that front. >
An additional option which would be closer to a LiveDVD option would be PortableGIS via a usb.http://www.archaeogeek.com/blog/portable-gis/ And yes I agree that we should distribute OSGeo4W and MS4W on top of live options as giveaways at booths etc. As for the statement earlier made "...with installing the damn software and get to developing with it." I think it would be more appropriate to change developing to using. It is much slower from my experience trying to develop on a windows system, and if you're talking Open Source, you really should be(wish list) talking cross platform or open platform. I'll also toss in that the free versions of Visual Studio leave out certain things that make it impossible to compile certain apps or to compile them without Visual Studio. Don't get me wrong, I think Open Source is open source in all it forms and I appreciate it all it's forms. But even if you only use windows or linux or mac acknowledging the others and working across is a good thing. Alex _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss