Luca Casagrande: luca.casagrande@gmail.com; http://ominiverdi.org

Introduction

What is a Livecd

As Wikipedia reports, LiveCd [1] is a "is a generic term for an operating system distribution that is executed upon boot, without installation on a hard drive. Typically, it is stored on bootable media such as a CD-ROM (Live CD), DVD (Live DVD), USB flash drive (Live USB), among others". Using this technology, users can get a "taste" of a full GNU/Linux box without fighting with any setup or installation. Once the LiveCd has been booted, everything it is loaded in the RAM, keeping safe the hard disk. Of course, once the machine shuts down, every change is lost.

Applications

There are many applications that can be satisfied by a livecd:

Using your favorite system everywhere you can find a PC. With a Pen Drive to save your data you will have a perfect survival kit.
Teaching purpose: During workshop, your audience can have anything you think it is appropriate to increase the learning process.
Using old machine: liveCd can be run on smooth machine and also without HD!
Spreading data: it's a very cool way to distribute your work around. You deliver your work ( for example output of complex elaboration ) and all application needed, configured to appreciate it best!

Limitation of a Livecd

Inside a livecd we have got the kernel, the drivers, the WM and all the applications. Of course is pretty impossible to put all the driver that could suite all the machine that have been created; can happen that, during the boot, the CD stops or something else goes wrong (e.g. missing lan detection). Thanks to the work of a lot of people ( in primis Knoppix [2] we have very good softwares that detect the hardware during the boot, but, like every software application, there can be still bug. As you can understand, the idea of having a universal machine it's an high expectation and the road to reach it is still long.

On the other hand, no information is saved while working in the LiveCd environment. If it is good from a side (e.g. keeping safe your hard disk), it can be tedious from another point of view. The solution for this is use a Storage Device (like a USB HD for example) to store all your outputs. This approach could also be used to save configuration file, so that you can have the same setting at every boot.

LiveCd and open source geospatial software

LiveCd can be a valid tool if applied with open source geospatial software.

An example of an application of liveCd and GIS FLOSS is run a workstation that will allow the user to explore data inside it or, for example, in a remote Postgis DB. You could use old machines to make access points to the database and set up them with the viewer that is always opened (as Internet Points do with browser), allowing saving of data on a storage device.

During the FOSS4G 2007 at Lausanne we used 2 LiveCds during seminaries (ka-Map and Grass 3d). We've allowed attendants to test immediately what they had just seeing in the slideshow. Once the workshop ended, they were able to take away their liveCd and use it at home or at their office. This is a good example of the great potential of liveCd in Educational purpose.

Ominiverdi Livecd

Objective

Our livecd will always try to offer to users those things:

Keep all software up to date with every single official release
Include Guide, Documents and Tutorial
Grant a good hardware compatibilty

Tecnical development

We decided to use the same tool that Gentoo Release Engineering Team use: Catalyst.

This choice as been made for 2 main reasons:

Use a system that will keep the updating stage fast and safe
Allow the customization of everything inside the CD

Desktop 2007.0

Our first release for 2007 contains these software:

   * QGIS 0.8
   * GRASS 6.2.1
   * PostgreSQL 8.1.5
   * PostGIS 1.1.4
   * GDAL 1.3.2

System run on a 2.6.18 Linux kernel and use GNOME [3] as Desktop Manager.

While writing this abstract, we are waiting for Qgis 0.8.1 for releasing version 2007.1.

Future Development and task

Our goal is to keep the CD updated, creating new versions with a regular schedule or at least as soon as major update or included softwares will come out.

Right now we are working on two tasks:

An Installer for the livecd
A server edition with mapserver and some webgis application

LiveCD installer

The installer will be accessible trough an icon on the desktop. The installation process will guide the user to the setup of the GNU/Linux distribution in his computer. Installing on the hard disk will allow better performances and the possibility to update all packages, thanks to the core of the Gentoo Linux [4] system.

Server Edition

The server edition will target a server machine with minimum graphical support but a full featured set of applications to offer OCG Web Services and UMN Mapserver front ends (ka-Map, Open Layers, p.Mapper, ecc.).

Newsletter Volume 1 Livecd

Contents