Phil online

I really wanted to run Linux on my carputer. Really. I was even willing to try to get my luddite wife to accept it. (It is her car, after all.) I could find a nice gui for it, I’m sure. But one thing help me back: GPS.

One primary function of the carputer is GPS navigation. And the map companies are very protective of their map information. It is the bread and butter, you know. So it’s hard to get a decent nav system on an open-source platform like linux. Because the maps aren’t available.

Or are they? I found lots of open-source maps based on the US Census data (finally!) but still no decent software.

Anyway, there’s another blog entry on that. Here I just want to discuss the software I am using.

• GPS navigation: Street Atlas - Road Warrior Edition
  It has very nice maps, but it’s got a terrible GUI. It was bearable on a laptop, but it’s almost useless on a touchscreen. I have got to find something else.
  Update: I’m ditching Street Atlas for something else. For now, it’ll be iGuidance. There’s a blog entry on this here.
• DVD/Movies: WinDVD
  I tried to use ZoomPlayer but it had just a couple of limitations that WinDVD didn’t. So did PowerDVD. All three worked just fine with my MPEG-2 decoder chip, though.
• MP3 Jukebox: FrodoPlayer
  I really didn’t like this thing at first. But every time I look for some new feature to add, I find it’s already in there! Frodo is way cool, and getting cooler. I haven’t been able to get it to play my videos yet, but I’m sure I will.
• Windows 2000 - because I ran out of XP licenses (but I have several left-over Win2k ones)
• NetStumbler — for finding wireless hotspots
• DVD Ripping: DVD Decrypter and SmartRipper
  I tried most of the packages on Doom9. These two work fine for me, offering slightly different options. Either one would do, I just haven’t settled on one yet. Both are free.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 1st, 2004 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Carputer, Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.