Software for DIY off-road navigation

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Conclusion

The first part of this series dealt with the required hardware on the basis of an EeePC. It's left to your imagination how you adapt your own old hardware correspondingly. You can also pick a distribution different from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

In this second and final part of the series, I have presented the necessary software such as QLandkarteGT, Mkgmap, Merkaartor, GMapTool, and cGPSmapper.

Now you have all the tools and knowledge at hand to obtain OSM maps from the Internet to create your off-road tour and traverse the landscape over waypoints, routes, and tracks. Creating a map with Merkaartor is time-consuming and is only necessary when no other usable maps for a region are available.

With all the trust in your netbook and reliability of Ubuntu, you should keep two further things on hand in the wilderness: a good magnetic compass and a detailed printed map of the region. Neither a compass nor a geological survey map require a reboot – and both keep working when the battery on your computer is dead. l

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