OpenSUSE Geo Repositories

This page presents information about installing Geospatial applications to the openSUSE Linux distribution.

openSUSE is a very popular server and desktop operating system, with an evolving community of users and developers. It is well known for its developing tools, configuration simplicity and its great collection of software.

Especially for the geospatial world, openSUSE was one of the first distributions to provide great collection of pre-packaged software. In the last 3 years, with the development of openSUSE Build Service (OBS) many users can build software of their own and distribute packages. At the same time, with OBS, new packages are getting included and maintained every day.

Stable OBS projects for Geospatial Applications

The official repository of geospatial applications for openSUSE is Application:Geo.

This project is maintained by official openSUSE members (some of which are also OSGeo members). It includes packages for various well known software (Mapserver, Geoserver, GDAL, GRASS, QGIS, PostGIS, Proj4 etc). For a full list of projects, check this link

For this OBS project, many architectures are supported, as well as other Linux distributions as well. Application:Geo is also a part of openSUSE Factory, i.e. is part of the development branch that will become the next version of the distribution. This means that the above packages are provided for past, current and future versions of openSUSE and are build often, when a dependency software gets changed.

• To install this repository in your openSUSE server/desktop you can use the following line from terminal:

 sudo zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Application:/Geo/openSUSE_11.4/ GEO

Then in order to install a package use:

 sudo zypper install mapserver

• Alternatively, one can use YAST Software Management to add the repository using the above link and then install packages from a Graphical User Interface.

• Finally, for beginners, there is an easier option to install software, the openSUSE Software Website. e.g. search for gdal. The results also provide One-Click Installer that will automatically add repositories and dependencies.

Non official (user) OBS projects for Geospatial Applications

There are many projects created and maintained by users in OBS in order to test unstable software or build software before including in official repositories. These projects are listed in openSUSE Software Website by clicking the "Search options" and enabling home user projects e.g.this search for all Mapserver packages in OBS, unveils beta packages and daily builds using Subversion trunk.

• One repository that serves this purpose in OBS is home:tzotsos maintained by Angelos Tzotsos (OSGeo member, openSUSE member, Freenode IRC nick: kalxas). This repository includes stable and unstable packages for geospatial software like OrfeoToolbox, spatialite, pycsw, zoo-project etc. Packages are submitted to Application:Geo when they are tested enough. To enable this repository use:

 sudo zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/tzotsos/openSUSE_11.4/ home:tzotsos

and install packages using:

 sudo zypper install Orfeo-Toolbox