GIS on a Stick

GIS on a USB stick. Please if you have any comments post download pop them in the comments area as it would be great to have some decent impartial reviews.


Announcement: Portable GIS Version 2 is released! Download it here

The philosophy behind this idea was to provide beginners with a ready-installed and configured stack of open source GIS tools that would run in windows without the need for emulation or a live cd. By taking out the often difficult installation and configuration, I hope to make it easier for beginners to get started with open source GIS, so they are not put off before it gets interesting and fun. Not only that, but having a fully self-contained GIS system may prove useful in a number of real-life situations.
Newly updated version 2 contains a self-contained installer, updated versions of all the constituent software packages, a new control panel, and improved documentation.
The current set of software includes:

• Desktop GIS packages QGIS (with GRASS plugin), uDIG and gvSIG,
• FWTools (GDAL and OGR toolkit)
• XAMPPlite (Apache2/MySQL5/Php5),
• PostgreSQL (version 8.4)/Postgis (version 1.4),
• Mapserver, OpenLayers, Tilecache, Featureserver, and Geoserver web applications.

The packages and menu system are all open source, but each component has a separate license. Some of the components have been altered in order to make them drive-letter independent.
Provisoes:

• This is not for production use. In order to keep end user configuration to a minimum there are a number of security holes and as such it should be used for demonstration and home use only.
• It is also not “stealth GIS”- no attempt has been made to leave no trace on the host system.

Support and Assistance:

• Launchpad site (with bug tracker and mailing list)
• Portable GIS Google Group