Garyu
December 8th, 2006, 01:19 AM
Some of the most advanced tools for GIS/GIT is freely available for the Ubuntu community, but few are aware of their true power. The applications listed here will cost you anywhere from 10'000 USD to a couple of million USD in their commercially licensed counterparts (like ESRI ArcMap/ArcSDE, Oracle, and so on).
To begin with, you should take a look at this wiki page:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGIS
On this page several GIS applications are listed. There are also howto's on how to install bleeding edge (development) versions from source of a couple of them.
Why do you need GIS? Well, maybe you want to know which way is the fastest to drive to work, or the most beautiful one. Maybe you are a forest owner and need to keep track of your stands and where to do clearcuts. Maybe you would just like to draw a treasure map for your kids. Maybe you have 973 terabyte of data about the soils and ground coverage in Great Britain that you need to write a report about. Anything that has to do with maps or area representations can be done with GIS software.
If you want lots of users to access your data, and make the access really fast, you should go with OpenGIS as a foundation. This is an addon for the PostgreSQL database which makes it possible to store data like points, lines and polygons in the data tables. If you're just doing something small for home or small-business use, you can store the data as files in your home directory.
If you want to manipulate data, look at 3D-representations of landscapes, do advanced automated edits on rasters or anything else you can think of, you will need GRASS - one of the worlds most advanced (and most difficult to learn) GIS applications. If you just need to draw some vectors and use a bitmap ortophoto as a background, you will be better off with QGIS (or Quantum GIS as it is really called) which has a more easy to use interface but much less power. QGIS and GRASS work really well together, so you should proably install both and try them out.
If you want to publish your data on a webserver, you should install MapServer, one of the most widely used GIS web-applications in the world.
GRASS
To install GRASS, simply type in a terminal
> sudo apt-get install grass
This will give you version 6.0, at least with the edgy repositories (oh, you have to enable the Universe repo). But the latest version is 6.2 and the bleeding edge version is 6.3. Problem is, the 6.2 version requires some libraries not in the repositories with the right version. Installing these libraries meant for me that I had to uninstall gnucash. So there are some drawbacks to using the latest version, but you get some new features as well, so you will have to decide on what you think is most important. I can't even get GRASS 6.2 to work with the newest QGIS (0.8). Anyway, these are the files you need if you want to try it out:
libreadline5_5.2-1_i386.deb
libgdal1-1.3.2_1.3.2-2_i386.deb
You can get them from here: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libgdal1-1.3.2
As usual, you install .deb packages with
> dpkg -i package_name.deb
After you have installed these libraries you will of course need to install the GRASS 6.2 version, which can be found here: http://packages.debian.org/experimental/science/grass
At the bottom of that page is .deb's for both i386 and AMD-64 architectures.
GRASS documentation:
http://www.gdf-hannover.de/media.php?id=0&lg=en (University of Hannover)
http://cemml.carleton.ca:8080/OGUG/ogug-community/tutorials/ (Ottawa GRASS GIS User Group)
http://grass.itc.it/grass60/manuals/html60_user/index.html (Official User Manual)
Quantum GIS (QGIS)
QGIS can be installed from the repo's with:
> sudo apt-get install qgis
Oh, and if you're running GRASS as well, don't forget:
> sudo apt-get install qgis-plugin-grass
The latest version is 0.8-preview2, which isn't fully developed and therefore not in the repos (0.7.4 in the repo). You can find .deb's for both 0.7.9 and 0.8 at: http://qgis.org/uploadfiles/ubuntu_edgy/
There are some unresolved dependencies here, and I haven't had time to look at solving them yet. Currently I have a conflict with GRASS 6.2 which I am evaluating. But just try installing the deb's and locate the missing libraries and what not at the Debian unstable repo: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/
Documentation for Quantum GIS:
http://qgis.org/releases/userguide.pdf (Official documentation)
http://blog.qgis.org/?q=node/10 (Tutorial for programmers wanting to implement QGIS features)
PostGIS
If you want the PostGIS database extension, it's very easy to install:
> sudo apt-get install postgis
I did this on a system where I already had PostgreSQL installed, so I'm actually not sure if you need to install that first. If you get errors from the above, just do a
> sudo apt-get install postgresql-8.1
That will get you going. To administer your database, you will want a graphical tool (GUI) rather than using the terminal and typing commands for everything. So go ahead and install pgAdmin3:
> sudo apt-get install pgadmin3
This is a very easy to use tool to do whatever you want with your PostgreSQL/PostGIS database.
The version installed from the repo's (edgy) is 1.1.2, but the newest version is 1.1.6. If you want to get that, the source is available for your own compilation from: http://postgis.refractions.net/download/
Documentation on PostGIS: http://postgis.refractions.net/docs/postgis.pdf
MapServer
To install from repositories:
> sudo apt-get install cgi-mapserver mapserver-bin perl-mapscript php4-mapscript php5-mapscript python-mapscript
I haven't actually tried this yet, because these things conflicts with my new GRASS libraries (as I said, having versions that aren't in the repo's will give you some troubles). But everyone tells me it is a very good application. Of course, you will need a webserver, such as apache, and the OpenGIS or a MySQL database running, as well as PHP.
Documentation for MapServer (official homepage):
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs
Now install these things, learn more about GIS, and help develop these applications. Several of them are the best in the world at what they do, but they also (particularly GRASS) have very hostile user interfaces. A lot of work remains to be done in other words. :cool:
To begin with, you should take a look at this wiki page:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGIS
On this page several GIS applications are listed. There are also howto's on how to install bleeding edge (development) versions from source of a couple of them.
Why do you need GIS? Well, maybe you want to know which way is the fastest to drive to work, or the most beautiful one. Maybe you are a forest owner and need to keep track of your stands and where to do clearcuts. Maybe you would just like to draw a treasure map for your kids. Maybe you have 973 terabyte of data about the soils and ground coverage in Great Britain that you need to write a report about. Anything that has to do with maps or area representations can be done with GIS software.
If you want lots of users to access your data, and make the access really fast, you should go with OpenGIS as a foundation. This is an addon for the PostgreSQL database which makes it possible to store data like points, lines and polygons in the data tables. If you're just doing something small for home or small-business use, you can store the data as files in your home directory.
If you want to manipulate data, look at 3D-representations of landscapes, do advanced automated edits on rasters or anything else you can think of, you will need GRASS - one of the worlds most advanced (and most difficult to learn) GIS applications. If you just need to draw some vectors and use a bitmap ortophoto as a background, you will be better off with QGIS (or Quantum GIS as it is really called) which has a more easy to use interface but much less power. QGIS and GRASS work really well together, so you should proably install both and try them out.
If you want to publish your data on a webserver, you should install MapServer, one of the most widely used GIS web-applications in the world.
GRASS
To install GRASS, simply type in a terminal
> sudo apt-get install grass
This will give you version 6.0, at least with the edgy repositories (oh, you have to enable the Universe repo). But the latest version is 6.2 and the bleeding edge version is 6.3. Problem is, the 6.2 version requires some libraries not in the repositories with the right version. Installing these libraries meant for me that I had to uninstall gnucash. So there are some drawbacks to using the latest version, but you get some new features as well, so you will have to decide on what you think is most important. I can't even get GRASS 6.2 to work with the newest QGIS (0.8). Anyway, these are the files you need if you want to try it out:
libreadline5_5.2-1_i386.deb
libgdal1-1.3.2_1.3.2-2_i386.deb
You can get them from here: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libgdal1-1.3.2
As usual, you install .deb packages with
> dpkg -i package_name.deb
After you have installed these libraries you will of course need to install the GRASS 6.2 version, which can be found here: http://packages.debian.org/experimental/science/grass
At the bottom of that page is .deb's for both i386 and AMD-64 architectures.
GRASS documentation:
http://www.gdf-hannover.de/media.php?id=0&lg=en (University of Hannover)
http://cemml.carleton.ca:8080/OGUG/ogug-community/tutorials/ (Ottawa GRASS GIS User Group)
http://grass.itc.it/grass60/manuals/html60_user/index.html (Official User Manual)
Quantum GIS (QGIS)
QGIS can be installed from the repo's with:
> sudo apt-get install qgis
Oh, and if you're running GRASS as well, don't forget:
> sudo apt-get install qgis-plugin-grass
The latest version is 0.8-preview2, which isn't fully developed and therefore not in the repos (0.7.4 in the repo). You can find .deb's for both 0.7.9 and 0.8 at: http://qgis.org/uploadfiles/ubuntu_edgy/
There are some unresolved dependencies here, and I haven't had time to look at solving them yet. Currently I have a conflict with GRASS 6.2 which I am evaluating. But just try installing the deb's and locate the missing libraries and what not at the Debian unstable repo: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/
Documentation for Quantum GIS:
http://qgis.org/releases/userguide.pdf (Official documentation)
http://blog.qgis.org/?q=node/10 (Tutorial for programmers wanting to implement QGIS features)
PostGIS
If you want the PostGIS database extension, it's very easy to install:
> sudo apt-get install postgis
I did this on a system where I already had PostgreSQL installed, so I'm actually not sure if you need to install that first. If you get errors from the above, just do a
> sudo apt-get install postgresql-8.1
That will get you going. To administer your database, you will want a graphical tool (GUI) rather than using the terminal and typing commands for everything. So go ahead and install pgAdmin3:
> sudo apt-get install pgadmin3
This is a very easy to use tool to do whatever you want with your PostgreSQL/PostGIS database.
The version installed from the repo's (edgy) is 1.1.2, but the newest version is 1.1.6. If you want to get that, the source is available for your own compilation from: http://postgis.refractions.net/download/
Documentation on PostGIS: http://postgis.refractions.net/docs/postgis.pdf
MapServer
To install from repositories:
> sudo apt-get install cgi-mapserver mapserver-bin perl-mapscript php4-mapscript php5-mapscript python-mapscript
I haven't actually tried this yet, because these things conflicts with my new GRASS libraries (as I said, having versions that aren't in the repo's will give you some troubles). But everyone tells me it is a very good application. Of course, you will need a webserver, such as apache, and the OpenGIS or a MySQL database running, as well as PHP.
Documentation for MapServer (official homepage):
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs
Now install these things, learn more about GIS, and help develop these applications. Several of them are the best in the world at what they do, but they also (particularly GRASS) have very hostile user interfaces. A lot of work remains to be done in other words. :cool: