NYX!

[athelind]

I've decided that if I'm going to keep my l33t GIS Skillz honed, I need to have Geographic Information System software on my personal machine to work and play with. Most major commercial GIS packages would be well out of my price range even if the Employment Fairy should appear from the stars and grant me a job, and of course I would never consider non-commercial access routes to such applications. Never. Ever. Even if I could work around their razzin' frazzin' registration systems.

GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) is a public domain, open-source GIS application native to UNIX-flavored systems. There is a Windows version, but it's buggy, and beyond my ability to install. For one, it requires "Cygwin", which has indecipherable installation instructions in its own right.

If I'm going to go to that much trouble and that steep a learning curve, I figure that I should finally stop procrastinating and just install some flavor of Linux.

And so, I'm asking for suggestion, feedback, and input on Operating Systems -- the one topic that makes Religion, Politics, and Sex seem tame in comparison.

What flavor of Linux/BSD/BFD/Whatever do you recommend?

Obviously, my recent political posts didn't engender nearly enough conflict and discontent to suit me.

Comments

[richardf8]

I'm no partisan in these matters, but Red Had 9.0 was keeping me happy until my Linux boxen were stolen.

[tikaani.livejournal.com]

I've been using FreeBSD 5 lately for my tinkering.

[taral.livejournal.com]

Debian, in a few months when they put out their next release. :)

[ounceofreason.livejournal.com]

I'd go with the one that fat hairy virgins use.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

That's who I'm polling!

So, which one DO you use?

[ounceofreason.livejournal.com]

Hey now. I am not hairy. Bastard.

[shavastak.livejournal.com]

Keep me updated on GRASS; I'm interested in GIS myself, professionally and personally, and would love to have a personal version, but I have no real experience with UNIX. :(

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Follow the link, and you'll know as much as I do!

[tephra]

I personally run SuSE, of course I also run Solaris (both x86 and sparc platforms). My friends generally run Debian or OpenBSD (the latter is what my web/mail server is running).

[palanth.livejournal.com]

I liked Mandrake the few times I have played with it.

[hedgegoth.livejournal.com]

Mandrake fan here - Mandrake 10 is doing well on 3 of my machines.
Debian is quite nice, but a little behind the curve, great at updating software though.