There has been a lot of buzz about QGIS on Twitter lately. Two blog posts by Nathan Woodrow (@madmanwoo) and two screenshots by Don Meltz (@DonMeltz) convinced me to give QGIS a try. And what a pleasant surprise it is!

From the QGIS website:

“Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) licensed under the GNU General Public License. QGIS is an official project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). It runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows and supports numerous vector, raster, and database formats and functionalities.”

James Fee goes as far as to suggest that QGIS may be a “drop-in replacement for ArcView”.

I was planning to spend some more time with QGIS before I blogged about it, but I couldn’t contain my excitement. So here are some quick first impressions:

• The installer (78 MB) downloaded in three minutes.
• The installation completed in four.
• Loaded NJ counties (SHP) data layer from a network drive. Fast!
• Some initial issues were quickly resolved.
• Response from the Twitter community is amazing.
• The Linux distribution seems to be preferred by many. I will give it a try next.

More in-depth coverage of QGIS in my next post. Working title: “Come for the flavor, stay for the taste.”