Many of you have probably at least heard of TopoFusion. If you haven’t, you should check it out. It’s a great piece of software for analyzing and manipulating GPS data (and it’s written by Scott, who is also one fast mofo on a bike). Everything from making those nifty elevation profiles, to logbook functionality, to overlaying your track on one of several downloaded maps or photo overlays, to playing back an accellerated version of your trek (I stopped for HOW long!?).

The only problem for me is that it is currently available for windows only, and I am a linux user. I can’t blame Scott for this, because that is definitely where the market is, and hey, you gotta make your money somehow, right?

I do enjoy using google earth (as most of you have probably figured out) because I feel like the interface for looking at an overlayed track is really slick, and you can get some really great detail on the photos. But, alas, the analysis and manipulation of tracks is severely lacking in comparison to TopoFusion.

So, I set about using WINE to run TopoFusion on Linux. After a bit of playing, I have had some fairly good success, and the program is about 95% functional. There are a couple bugs that are kind of a pain, but for the most part it runs really well.

Now, I know that most of you out there really have no interest in this whatsoever. I can tell, because of the visitors I get on a daily basis, according to google analytics, only 4% use linux.

Not exactly a big reader base.

Either way, if there is somebody else out there who is reading this from a linux machine, have a look at the tutorial I put together on how to get TopoFusion running here.

If there is anyone else out there who has this interest and gets it running, it would be great if you submitted info on it to the Application Database to supplement the info I have up there.

So, to the 4% of you who are reading this from a linux box, have at it.

For the rest of you, go download a copy of Ubuntu or some other flavor of linux and try it out. I’d be happy to convince you of the benefits of using linux and opensource software, but that could turn this into a much longer post than I had intended. . . .