I’ve been editing OSM for years. (896,339 edits in 3,427 changesets, apparently!) For me, it’s all about the free data. I once got a thank you note from someone who worked for a city with a particularly large municipal park. I’d added almost all the trails to the park and other information, and they’d used it to produce a printed map for the general public. Exactly the kind of thing I’d hoped for!
Personally, I do a lot of dualsport motorcycling and most backcountry maps around here are subpar. I map tons of trails and 2track and put them on the Garmin so I know where I’m going.
OSM is also great in lots of Europe–tons of detail.
JOSM is great.
Someone just recommended Organic Maps for the phone–it’s way snappier than Google Maps, but still not great with finding addresses.
I’ve had the best luck with BBBike and OpenMapChest for getting pre-built map files.
Basically you have to get one of these files with all the data you want in it and then stick it on your SD card on the GPS. (The GPS should mount like a thumb drive. If you already have a gmapsupp.img file on there, you might want to back it up in case things go sideways.) Some GPSes support multiple gmapsupp.img files, but a lot don’t. Here’s a thread on merging .
When I needed super fresh data, I’d download raw OSM data from Overpass and use mkgmap to build the gmapsupp.img.
That’s really cool to hear about the parks. Most of the parks around here are pretty well mapped out. Presumably the local community is pretty strong.
I really want to produce something for my city’s NET and BEECN emergency response programs. They already have a few different maps, but not one unified map. My ideal is a map that could be taken offline or printed to spec.
As others have mentioned, I really recommend StreetComplete. I used it for my city and it’s a nice and helpful way as well to walk around what would otherwise be a boring scenery I’ve seen too many times.
I do get looks when I walk up and down stairs trying to count the steps though.
I spent a few hours last night adding buildings and restaurants and removing incorrect items. It was actually kind of fun and therapeutic and I plan to do more of it tonight.
Same here. I actually use OSM editing as others would use drawing. I even edit on OSM while engaging with people, just as others would sketch in their drawing book.
My girlfriend thinks it’s dumb and I’m wasting my time because Google maps and Apple maps and Bing maps exists
In case you or she is into hiking: Komoot is literally using OSM data. Paths for hiking and cycling outside the city are almost nonexistent on the big commercial services. When I’m going for a walk and I find a trashcan, I add it to OSM while I’m walking. My thinking is that people might be less likely to throw trash in the woods when they know that a trashcan is just around the corner.
Apologies, I just realized this question is not Linux specific.
“Has anyone used or contributed to OpenStreetMap, the data source of popular Linux apps Gnome Maps and KDE Marble?”
I was around 16 or 17 when my Windows Vista laptop took a dump. Managed to install Ubuntu via WUBI, not because I was interested in Linux, I just really wanted to watch Gundam on Youtube and I didn’t have the money to take my laptop to a repair shop. When I got a new laptop I planned on staying with Windows 7 but 3 days later I nuked and paved Linux Mint over it because I got used to how Linux worked lol. 13 years later I’m running Gentoo on my main desktop, Arch on my laptop, and debian everywhere else.
I want to try gentoo someday but there’s no way I’d want it on my main machine, you are for sure dedicated. I think I might try out debian sometime though, maybe on one of my servers since they’re all running Ubuntu right now.
I use Debian exclusively for my servers. Rock solid experience for me. On my desktops I like having up to date stuff and even though Debian Sid exists it’s not the same as Arch or Gentoo testing.
I think you misunderstood the timeline. But your point would have been valid back then. I was a bit obsessed with the screen time that I wasn’t allowed at home, and did some pretty bad things to my parents computers so I could watch Warehouse 13 and Battlestar Galactica until 3 am.
I distinctly remember a moment when I was 21 when I suddenly realized that I could actually control my impulses. It’s so freeing to have a fully developed prefrontal cortex.
“what was your first Linux experience” is quite different than “why did you switch.”
My first Linux experience was with fedora core 4 in 2005 or 6. I switched to Linux in 2019 or so because Microsoft turned windows into full on spyware and my games finally mostly all worked on Linux. Very different answers.
To be honest, there is a class of problems that are extremely common, like maintaining installations, deployment scripts, logging, argument parsing. Apparently you tool belongs to this “really common” problems.
There is also a class of people who tend to solve problems by programming, and prefer doing so before doing some sort of exhaustive research for existing solution. Apparently you belong to this class of people.
I love that this class of people is here (hey, I’m part of it!), having this creative mindset is superb for learning and growing, and for keeping it fun (that’s really important! it’s dangerous to go without fun!).
I say, if you really get joy from solving problems this way then definitely keep this. Perks of being in this “class” is that we often grow attached to our projects and watching it not succeed can be painful.
So just remember to not put all the eggs into one basket: it’s good to realize when you’re in a domain where lots of mature solutions exist so success requires (sans impossible luck) being way much better than the existing ones. Because it can mean that getting people to try out your solution can be disproportionately harder than it “should be” given quality of it. You might need to prepare yourself for a long season of being the only user. On the other hand, looking for beta testers or reviewers, can be a different thing.
Just to make clear, I don’t want this to sound discouraging in any way – it’s just personal experience and failure that might be good for others to not repeat.
I think the fact that, eg. on pypi there are tons of logging and argument parsing libraries shows the overlap between these classes of problems. Another thing is that most of these libraries is going to be abandoned. Again, I think that overall it’s a good way – it means that lots of people love coding and are trying – it’s humanity’s way of getting awesome things.
Maybe around 2006, I booted a live CD of Ubuntu and ran the 6 disc install of Unreal Tournament 2004 so that I could play UT with a friend who was staying over - the laptop was my mum’s, so I wasn’t allowed to install anything directly on it. UT2004 had a native Linux version on disc.
The install took until 4am and we played until the sun came up, absolute bliss getting it working.
When I was 16 I was working at a grocery store and another worker around my age talked me into trying it out. I had heard of it from a high school class I had taken, so I figured I’d give it a try. I called him on the phone and he talked me through installing Ubuntu Dapper Drake on my laptop. The biggest issue back then was getting the WiFi to work, which required ndiswrapper to used the Windows drivers. We eventually got it working and then played Tremulous together.
I dual booted for a while, occasionally got angry at Windows and nuked the partition to go fully Linux. Occasionally got angry at Linux and nuked the partition to go fully Windows. Eventually settled fully on Linux. I did have a separate drive with Windows installed in my desktop at one point to play around with VR, but I’m not much of a gamer so the only time I use Windows now is in a VM if I need to interface with some device that only provides Windows drivers. Pretty rare at this point.
I will admit I sometimes think I want to boot up windows and play some vr games, but I’m at the point now where I used to be with windows where I don’t really want to spend all that time rebooting lol.
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