Project Geoserver

i have setup a geoserver on tomcat on a local server (Debian). Its pretty easy, probably even easier than installing a notepad replacement.
Data configuring took some time to make sense. I had been working with UMS mapserver for a couple of weeks and all that R&D on .MAP files was pretty useful in writing styles for geoserver layers. Although my job was only limited to finding the possibilities and limitations of geoserver WMS.
Setting up tilecache was probably the "hardest" part of this project since all the data was in espg:4326 (ie longitude,latitude) but the request is in a custom format which is not directly related to anything used by any other application like say openlayers. So a few days of a lot of long double/float values, variables with even longer names, writing down outputs and staring at them for some pattern.. later i ended up with a php script with took our input and gave out a tilecache request. Also out tiles started at some displacement and had a different degree/pixel ratio than standard, so even that was a tricky bit since the output had to fit exactly on our tiles

Outstanding problems:
1. i am wondering whether geoserver lacks on-the-fly line join cuz my highways (which are multiple line segments) are displayed with rough edges. This doesnt happen in UMS mapserver by the way. I did manage to join simple roads with line end property but this doesnt work too well with roads that have more than one style(roads with boundries etc.)
i probably will have to run scripts to join all my roads in the database itself but then i wonder whether my queries will be affected since even to display a pixel of road, the query will return the whole road instead of a smaller segment as it does now. (maybe postgis handles this case, maybe it doesnt)
2. Geoserver buffer support doesnt seem to work as well as i would have hoped. even with a few labels i see tiles cutting text. I am using metatiles too. Maybe im not using the right buffer settings. There are a lot of style examples for geoserver but most of them address the same kind of prolems and use the same old simple style options.
I might write one myself when I get some time.

My Box continued.....

well apart from the few times that i thought about formatting my freebsd partition completely, Its been a fun ride setting up freebsd.

BSD never lets u forget that it is after all a unix and not one of our friendly neighborhood desktop oses(Windows, Top linux Dist's).

* You get a lot of graphical utilities but most of them would not do what they're supposed to(no matter how much u plead/pray)

* Networking although a strong point of freebsd, gave me a lot of problems (mainly with db/web/im servers)

* No driver for my beetel ADSL2+ modem(through USB).It does work with the Ethernet option which unfortunately is not free(used by another comp) most of the time.(and thats why I am in windos right now :( )

* Fast!! it is awesome when it comes to loading and shutdown speeds. Compared to my windows os (where while shutting down, the screensaver comes up!! ), ah ...... well it basically kicks a$$.

* Its got Ports!! ports in freebsd have their advantages and disadvantages

adv : you get everything u will possibly need in ports
easy install / manage (gui with bpm,kpackage or command)
auto download and compile of dependencies recursively

disadv : you dont have much configuration options in most ports
many ports install number of packages which are not needed (example : i wanted to install jdk, it took 6-7 hours of downloading and compiling ports only to tell me that their is an error in the install script. it installed countless packages in that time including jre-linux and mozilla. why????????)
version conflicts for libraries, binaries(windows users can never understand this, i do only because i have worked on every major linux there is)
really long chain of dependencies for ports.(example : anything related to graphics/gui)
if i want to upgrade a desktop env(like gnome or kde), i need 2-4 days and 24 hour net(my own approximation with possible exaggeration)

I am using currently blackbox(on both freebsd and windows) as my desktop after trying out all the different options in the ports.
i liked bb the most since it is fast(as if freebsd was fast enough) and it has a lot of plugins available. also i like the mouse-scroll actions it has (workspace change, window switch, window minimize to its titlebar)

this is not a review or nothing but ill still give my opinion

*for someone who loves to have a hackable/configurable environment or is looking for an os for local/internet servers, freebsd is one of the better oses.(another is gentoo)
Obvious Warning :: Not for the faint of heart :), atleast not yet anyway. Although it has improved a lot from 5.4 which was the first Version i had installed (currently 6.2)

*and if you need a replacement for windows but have "some" knowledge about the internals of linux, dont go for freebsd. go for something like OpenSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva or other such big distributions.

*Further if u are a linux-nonothing use knoppix LiveCD for getting some handle on it or better yet try Xandr OS (the Damn thing is easier than windows)