Commercial PC chartplotter on linux

Shuggy

Shuggy

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Sorry - a bit geeky this - but does anyone know if there's a commercial PC chartplotter package with electronic charts (i.e., rather than scanning my own) that has been produced for linux? I've recently fallen in love with linux and am running 2 PCs in parallel - one with linux and one with windows, and I'm gradually trying to get everything I need onto linux. It's much, much faster and more stable but I use SeaProLite on Windows and I can't find a commercial equivalent (not one that is cobbled together).

I don't have the USB dongle with me as it's on the boat but I'm pretty sure I won't be able to get SeaProLite to run on Wine as I suspect it won't 'see' the dongle.

Thanks for anyone with an unhealthy interest in these things.

Shuggy
 
Have you tried running qemu/kqemu or vmware player? I am playing with these at the moment on an Xubuntu installation. So far all the 'simple' software seems OK. slight hassle running the USB but I am sure it is resolvable.
 
Brendan - apologies. My memory is shocking - I even posted a response on that thread about printing! I'll have a look at Seaclear. I have a slight aversion to running software under emulators but only down to high moral principles about software working in a native environment, hence my question. But if it works fine, great. Time to have a look at costs!
 
I put VMWARE on my laptop last week and then installed WinXP. When running XP you don't know that it is on top of linux. You can down load it free but obviously you still need a licenced version of XP. The beauty is that pressing ctrl and alt will put you back to linux. Then instead of booting XP each time, you can pause it. When you boot linux you just rhun vmware and start XP from where it left off.
 
No I haven't. In fact I hadn't heard of it! I'm on a bit of a steep learning curve. I assume it allows windows apps to run under linux?
 
No, it actualy runs windows and can run several itterations of it at once. The windows group in work use it with server 2003. One Proliant server runs 10 copies of 2003. this allows them to put together test systems for the likes of Lotus Notes which would otherwise require 10 systems. it realy is good. IT will run other operating systems like Sun Solaris or other copies of linux.
 
Hmmm. Thanks. Sounds like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut! I think I will have a closer look at Seaclear under Wine.
 
seaclear is free, hence my question mark about commercial

I found a forum discussing nav software on linux recently, and the work arounds they were using to make many commercial packages run, but cannot for the life of me find it again.

I'd assume for now, that many will not run 100% from what I've read, but that is second hand info, and I can't verify.
 
Thanks Brendan. I'm not very techy, but I've almost got all of my windows apps ticked off on linux and I would love to ditch windows except for the occasional foray under a dual boot system to create posh Word docs when Openoffice won't quite do it for me.
 
It's really poor at positioning text where you want it, and Impress (Powerpoint equivalent) has similar issues. In addition, I do quite complex - for me anyway - charts in Powerpoint that you can't do in Openoffice without massive hassle. There's an element of me not being used to it yet (been using it on and off for a year) but there's also an element of it not being as good as Office. I'm sure if I had nothing else it would be ok, but as I need to do big collaborative tender submissions on occasion then sending docs on to colleagues under Openoffice doesn't really work smoothly. I can live with it for 90% of the time but I feel sorry for my colleagues on occasion! We're launching a new business this year and we're going to start as 'linux only' from the word go, so no compatibility issues.
 
thanks for that. I've only tried OpenOffice at play level, and not tried it at collaborative level. That's why I've stayed with MS for this so far, can't afford the time to try it and see
 
To the best of my knowledge there is no commercial Linux plotter available, and probably unlikely to be.
Marine software is a small niche market and Linux customers a tiny proportion within that.
You would probably be able to count the total number of sales on two hands.
So basically not worth it.
 
Which is why I am on a mission to tell everyone how good PClinuxOS is - and you can download it here for free! You can even run it off a CD to trial it without touching your hard drive or Windows installation. There - let's make it more than a handful - perhaps a bucketful? Hope this doesn't count as advertising...
 
Shuggy

Just trying your posted version of Linux now from a boot able cd drive.

Question

obviously it is slower to load as is on cd drive , how quickly does a properly installed hard drive version take to boot and be ready to use? ie is it much quicker than xp?


q2

the screen seems fuzzier than under windows, letters not as clear, haven't tried any graphics yet. Is this a driver issue or down to linnux?
 
Hi David

It fires up more quickly than XP on a hard drive install - the beauty of it is that once the dektop is open, it doesn't take for ever then to become ready to use.

As for the resolution, you need to change this in the control panel (the monitor & spanner on the bottom LHS of the screen). However, if you're running off a CD it won't recognise your changes & therefore the resolution will stay pretty poor. I have the right drivers running on my notebook under linux and the screen looks superb.

You can try Knoppix linux which allows you to save your changes onto a USB stick but I've never felt the need to experiment with it. It's the same desktop environment as PCLinuxOS.

Good luck! It'll be worth it...
 
Thanks for your speedy reply

Iam trying linnux as a computer upgrade is coming soon, and whereas I dont mind spending my bucks for more bang, and well understand the laws of diminishing returns, I dont go along with paying my buck to stop me doing something I wouldnt have done any way (drm & HDD loss to stop DVD copying / theft) as I under stand a substantial portion of vista is devoted to this end. (no point in having another xp as this will fall into the non ulegacy status as win98 eventually)

Interestingly I have tried knoppix yesterday & your suggested build? / version is less fuzzy and seems to have a better layout in terms of its help site. Interestingly both shift the screen to the right, or perhaps windows shifts it to the left?

I suppose the bullet will have to be bitten and backup / copy the content of my second drive and give it a linnux partition, to further experiment from.

Will there be a problem booting from partitioned drives? (obviously after altering the bios boot order)

Is there a method of copying files , mainly pictures from a nfts(windows) drive to the new linnux partition when created, other than by coping to a cd or dvd disc and then reloading?

comments please
 
If you install ubuntu or one of it's derivatives onto your new partition it will by default add grub, the boot loader, to the first point of your first hard drive. You then have the option of booting to any OS installed. Linux support for NTFS write is still not good, I believe, but you can make the drives/partitions visible to your new OS and copy your files over. And you can make the files visible to windows if you need to.
 
Beat me to it! And better knowledge too. I'm not bothering with dual boot at the moment so I don't know the answers, but I do know that Linux reads my Packard Bell external HD with all my windows files on it.
 
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