If you are in an enterprise setting and you currently evaluate ArcGIS vs QGIS, pick QGIS and thank me later. ArcGIS Enterprise is a piece of software that feels straight out of the 90s and has no native linux binary (can be started with wine). It is expensive as hell and resource hungry.
QGIS is a free, open-source, cross platform geographical information system
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Re: QGIS is a free, open-source, cross platform geographical information system
#32Is this on its way to pushing out the incumbent proprietary solution and becoming the standard a la Blender? Or is this more LibreOffice -it’s there, but missing so much functionality/polish that an expert will immediately find blockers vs the status quo?
LibreOffice vs Office 365/Google Drive is probably the more relevant comparison. I won’t comment on market share, but even if theoretically QGIS totally displaced ArcGIS Pro/ArcMap/ArcGIS on the desktop, the arena of competition has shifted to ArcGIS Online and its competitors. And once you’re in ArcGIS Online, Pro becomes the convenient choice for desktop editing. LibreOffice could be miles better than Office on des…
That's an insightful nuance. I've seen you just create divisions in organisations because while it is a really fully featured desktop application, it implies a way of working that doesn't play well with the cloud, which creates barriers between experimenting and production.
Re: QGIS is a free, open-source, cross platform geographical information system
#33QGIS is a gold standard to verify you tools works fine and data is in a correct format ...
if you are a web based first, you have even better options to build and extend
kepler, protomaps, maplibre-gl-js
https://github.com/maplibre/maplibre-gl-js
the rest can be found on great Qiusheng Wu’s (aka @giswqs) Geo/GeoAI tutorials channels and repos
https://www.youtube.com/@giswqs/videos
but what really amazed me is how geo spatial support is growing inside of databases recently
https://duckdb.org/docs/stable/core_extensions/spatial/overv...
all mighty postgis https://postgis.net/docs/manual-3.5/postgis_cheatsheet-en.ht...
https://sedona.apache.org/latest/
https://geoparquet.org/releases/v1.0.0/
and many unlocked dataset compare to other industries
https://docs.overturemaps.org/getting-data/duckdb/
https://www.openstreetmap.org/
lot great webtools are comming for sure and you still can be 100% of most of your geospatial pipeline
p.s. want to extend the above list with self-hosted tools with minimum or none dependencies on paid APIs, and recommendations are greatly appreciated
Re: QGIS is a free, open-source, cross platform geographical information system
#34I’ve worked in the GIS space for a while, developed mapping services on the backend and frontend, the whole thing.
And yet I’ve never been able to get into QGIS. I’ve used the ogr libraries, I know that there’s an incredible amount of smart work behind these tools. 100% all due respect to everyone involved.
But I’ve found the ui so daunting that I’ve never been able to use it.
I want to be proven wrong. Are there gentle/great tutorials/guides?
I know this isn’t a “vpn software before tailscale” kind of situation. But, you know?
Re: QGIS is a free, open-source, cross platform geographical information system
#35If you are in an enterprise setting and you currently evaluate ArcGIS vs QGIS, pick QGIS and thank me later. ArcGIS Enterprise is a piece of software that feels straight out of the 90s and has no native linux binary (can be started with wine). It is expensive as hell and resource hungry.
YES. I made the switch 10 years ago and my professional life improved overnight
Re: QGIS is a free, open-source, cross platform geographical information system
#36QGIS is great. It's a slightly janky version of ArcMap, but ArcMap has always been janky anyway, so it doesn't matter for most things. And QGIS is super extensible. There have been so many random times that QGIS has helped me out over the years. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to it!
Do you work in GIS field and it is useful? I am trying to see how a GIS tool will help a typical audience here that may be a little interested in maps + data.
I taught myself QGIS for spatial analysis of map data-- coming at it from a coding perspective. It has great Python integration. It's also surprisingly useful as a spreadsheet alternative for certain tasks because it supports a SQL-like interface into CSV data, so you can join CSVs with spatial data or with each other, create views and virtual fields, and so on. Overall, very impressed with the depth, breadth, and ease of use considering how powerful it is.
Re: QGIS is a free, open-source, cross platform geographical information system
#37Is this on its way to pushing out the incumbent proprietary solution and becoming the standard a la Blender? Or is this more LibreOffice -it’s there, but missing so much functionality/polish that an expert will immediately find blockers vs the status quo?
I work in the mass appraisal space, and I use QGIS all the time. The professional alternative is ESRI's ArcGIS. A lot of shops I know (private and public) will use ArcGIS still, but I'm noticing an increasing number of people (particularly younger researchers/analysts) who are exclusively using QGIS. QGIS is powerful and full featured, but it is admittedly a bit rusty around the edges, especially when working with ve…
If companies that use ESRI cancelled one license a year and instead sponsored qgis development with the money...
https://qgis.org/funding/
Re: QGIS is a free, open-source, cross platform geographical information system
#38If you are in an enterprise setting and you currently evaluate ArcGIS vs QGIS, pick QGIS and thank me later. ArcGIS Enterprise is a piece of software that feels straight out of the 90s and has no native linux binary (can be started with wine). It is expensive as hell and resource hungry.
My brother is a GIS expert and does this for a living. At his workplace (trans-european electrical project) they use ArcGIS and privately he uses QGIS. He said he'd pick QGIS over ArcGIS every single day.
ArcGIS is very polished, but everything costs extra. QGIS has less polish but is supremely hackable and there are plugins for nearly everything.
Having used QGIS as a non-expert to extract mountain heightmaps from a border region between two datasets from different national bodies and looking up some property borders I can really recommend it. Took me less than an afternoon to get started
Re: QGIS is a free, open-source, cross platform geographical information system
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably closer to the first situation. It curb stomped ArcGIS in the geographic information system community. When I started working with GIS at work, expensive ESRI products were default in this market, a la matlab in another field. Most coleages of mine had not heard about QGIS. Now QGIS is ubiquitous. It did to ArcGIS and its countless paid add on modules what scipy/numpy did to matlab.
>It curb stomped ArcGIS in the geographic information system community Maybe for home or casual use, sure. I use a ~$4500/y Esri license level and it's worth every penny. Also, plenty of people are still using matlab!
I totally disagree. I switched off this license, and also ALSO saved additional because Spatial Analyst costs extra (all included by default in QGIS)
Re: QGIS is a free, open-source, cross platform geographical information system
#40QGIS is great. It's a slightly janky version of ArcMap, but ArcMap has always been janky anyway, so it doesn't matter for most things. And QGIS is super extensible. There have been so many random times that QGIS has helped me out over the years. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to it!
Arcmap is sooo janky. Looks like a refugee from Win 3.1 era with minor cosmetic updates (although I know the engine received big updates 2010-2020).
If people want QGIS to be pretty, just become a member and sponsor that initiative.