In which Windows Vista tries to kill the portable GIS idea

Posted March 7, 2008 * Comments(4)

Well, there was I just working away in the office, on my super-cool portable GIS setup, doing some work on a postgresql-driven database all working nicely on the USB stick. I should say that this has been working just fine in both my home (Vista) and office (XP) environment for months now.

Time came to head off home, so I stopped everything, ejected the stick nicely, took it home and went to start working on it again… only for postgresql to refuse to work. “Access Denied”, it said. “What do you mean, Access Denied?” I said. “Access Denied”, it said. So I tried it on my hubby’s Win XP machine. “No Problem”, it said. Repeat until you’re sick of trying.

So I remembered the Vista Windows Update on Monday, and restored my laptop back to before that. No joy…

Now, I have tried to be objective about Vista. I like my laptop, and to my mind the extra security measures were (until I turned them off) about as obtrusive as those on Ubuntu. I didn’t think it ran all that slowly, and had never found a programme or device that wasn’t compatible. Maybe I was just lucky.

Then, at Christmas, the rot started to set in. WinGrass doesn’t (or didn’t) work all that well. Cygwin wouldn’t play well. I ended up having to set up a virtual machine and run Ubuntu in it just to get to a stage where I could learn how to use GRASS. And now this. I’ll go to the mailing lists, of course, and try and figure out why it no longer wants to play, but please, just give me an operating system that lets me look under the hood and doesn’t unilaterally decide when to stop doing something it has quite happily done for months.

I’ll have to stick with Windows for the moment, because I need to get the portable GIS system working, and I have a sweet ITunes setup (and an even sweeter Ipod Touch), but I’m off to buy a copy of XP before it’s no longer possible to do that…

4 Comments so far

  1. pitix on March 24th, 2008

    It seems like the portable GIS setup is the only thing still tying you to Windows. Have you looked into the possiblity of getting your portable GIS to work on OS X? There are Mac versions of all the apps you need, so it would seem possible in principle.

  2. admin on March 27th, 2008

    Hi Pitix,
    I am interested in coming up with portable gis versions for other platforms, but the initial idea was to help users who are not familiar with open source packages to get used to using them without needing to worry about installation (which can sometimes be complicated)or having to learn an entirely new operating system just to use a programme. These types of users are predominantly using windows so it seemed sensible to start with a windows version.
    Thanks for stopping by!

    Jo

  3. SwissMike on April 8th, 2008

    Hi there,
    I’m working with GIS at Uni in Berne, Switzerland and I was wondering if you can offer your portable GIS-package for download. Sounds interesting

  4. admin on April 8th, 2008

    Hi SwissMike,

    It’s almost ready- honest! I have some last bits of tidying up to do then I need to get it hosted, and I’ll post here as to where you can find it.

    Thanks for stopping by,

    Jo

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