
Avoid Google Maps with Gnome Maps on GNU/Linux - eaguyhn
https://www.ghacks.net/2018/04/14/avoid-google-maps-with-gnome-maps-on-gnu-linux/
======
korginator
Much as I would like to avoid google, the routing on OSM or graphhopper leaves
a lot to be desired.

There's no routing using public transport. Half the buildings I've tried
looking up either don't exist on OSM / Gnome maps, or result in an address
half-way across the globe.

That said, I prefer using HERE maps as it works very well in offline mode,
including voice navigation, compared to anything else I've tried.

The fact is that getting a global mapping and navigation solution right takes
tremendous effort and money (Apple can tell you a lot about how their attempts
worked out for them), and I want an application that I can trust and that just
works when I'm behind the wheel or at an unfamiliar location.

I'm sure OSM and alternatives will continue to improve over the years, and
I'll play with them occasionally, but I will still go back to HERE, waze or
google maps for the important stuff.

~~~
aesh2Xa1
You can contribute better directions/addresses!

~~~
diggan
So how do you actually do this? Can you just open up Google Maps with OSM
side-by-side and copy addresses? Or you need to source it from somewhere else?

~~~
hanbura
Copying from Google Maps would violate copyright. Ideally you visit the place
in question and correct them in OSM based on your observations. There are also
some satellite maps that are licensed for use as OSM source (and that are
often integrated in OSM editors)

~~~
extra88
Facts like street addresses are not copyrightable. The visual drawing of roads
and other features on maps can be, however.

~~~
pksadiq
> Facts like street addresses are not copyrightable.

Google says it is[0]. It might be true because when you get street address
from Google, you are also getting the mark on the map for the location.
Whether it's true legally or not, it's better to stay away from their data.
That is, if you use Google maps, you agree their terms and thus you are not
allowed to copy the data.

And btw, I have seen (possibly deliberate) mistakes in street address markers
in Bing maps (which is the recommended map[1] to follow for Open street map
editors). So don't think that they won't find you if you copy their data).

[0] [https://developers.google.com/maps/terms#6-googles-
proprieta...](https://developers.google.com/maps/terms#6-googles-proprietary-
rights) (The definition of Content is explained in the following section,
which says "... and places data (including business listings). ")

[1]
[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing_Maps](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing_Maps)

~~~
maxerickson
Bing Maps aren't recommended for use in OSM.

Microsoft has generously provided permission and server resources for use of
_Bing Aerial Imagery_ since 2010, but that's different than their map product.

Lately there's a bunch more imagery providers that give permission for use in
OSM. Mapbox, Digital Globe and ESRI all provide imagery layers with global
coverage. There's also quite some government imagery available, OSM editors
will show them as an option in the areas they cover, so be sure to check when
editing.

------
audidude
If you're interested in contributing to GNOME Maps, you can install GNOME
Builder and run it, click on the Maps icon under "Contribute to an existing
project", and then hit the Run button once it clones/opens.

You'll have a local build, with all the dependencies met, in an IDE to
contribute to the project.

Also, [http://wiki.gnome.org/Newcomers](http://wiki.gnome.org/Newcomers)

------
morsch
The thing is Google Maps is so much more than a pure map, or even a multi-
modal routing service.

It's also a searchable registry of all kinds of businesses, a review and qa
aggregator for everything from mountain peaks to restaurants; a price
comparison tool for hotels; an organized photo database where for many
restaurants you could, if you wanted to, see a satellite view of a restaurant,
aerial footage, then street view imagery and finally photos of individual
dishes. The list goes on, I'm sure there are features I've never seen because
they are not available where I live. It's probably the most impressive
customer facing Google product, and maybe the hardest to replace.

That said, I still have both Google Maps and Osmand on my Android device.
While it doesn't have the breadth of functionality that Google Maps does, and
Osmand's interface takes some getting used to, more often than not
OpenStreetMap exceeds Google Maps in terms of accuracy and detail of the pure
map data. Which is incredible! So when I'm planning a hike, I use OSM. But
during the hike, when I'm searching for a place to have a bite, I use Google.

~~~
jasonkostempski
"Google Maps is so much more than a pure map"

Which makes it's a shitty pure map. Every time one of those "features" gets in
the way of typing in an address and navigating, I want to throw my phone out
the window. That stuff should be plug-ins for people that think they need it.

~~~
morsch
Navigation is not a pure map feature, either.

~~~
jasonkostempski
Sorry, I forget sometimes most of you are from a differnt plane of existence.
I wish more of my wizard friends were on HN.

------
nkoren
> I was scrolling around the world, setting directions for how to cross Russia
> by foot (which let me tell you in case you ever wondered, should take
> roughly 60 hours, depending on locations used)

Huh, out of curiosity, I just checked Google Maps, and it suggests that
walking from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok would take 1,883 hours. That's
quite a discrepancy. I suspect that Google is probably more accurate in this
instance.

~~~
morsch
I'm pretty sure he meant to write _60 days_ (1440 hours).

------
fovc
What is the advantage of using Gnome Maps over just OpenStreetMap.org? From
their website[1], it seems like it's still just a client for the various
services

~~~
bebop
The OpenStreetMap.org application is only supposed to be used for editing OSM
data. It is not supposed to be used as a gmaps alternative. For that you
should take the Planet OSM data and create a map service (WMS or similar)
yourself.

~~~
maxerickson
The development of the website is definitely focused on helping mappers.

It's fine for individuals to use it for whatever though.

~~~
bebop
I guess it depends on how you define "heavy use". According to their policy,
you should not distribute any application that uses their tile server.

[https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/](https://operations.osmfoundation.org/policies/tiles/)

~~~
maxerickson
Sure. The OP is talking about individuals directly using the website as a map
though.

(I've added "for individuals" to my first comment)

------
linkmotif
> I was scrolling around the world, setting directions for how to cross Russia
> by foot (which let me tell you in case you ever wondered, should take
> roughly 60 hours, depending on locations used) in a matter of moments, and
> it really was quite easy to do.

This post lost me here. I couldn’t cross Maryland in 60 hours on foot. Much
less Russia. Missing some zeros?

~~~
chx
Could it be 60 days?

Russia has a maximum east-west extent of some 5,600 miles (9,000 km) and a
north-south width of 1,500 to 2,500 miles (2,500 to 4,000 km). (According to
Encyclopedia Britannica)

How long would that take to walk? Let's look at another continent for data..

According to the Pacific Crest Trail Association the Pacific Crest Trail spans
2,650 miles (4,265 kilometers) and the elite athletes can do two months,
generally it takes five months.

So: 60 days to cross Russia North-to-South is not entirely out of question.

And then, who knows what the author meant. If you were to walk from Pattina,
Estonia to Rasony, Belarus, that's about 60 hours and almost all of it is in
Russia and in a sense it crosses Russia.

~~~
linkmotif
Yeah I’m guessing it must be days. I entered Moscow to Vladivostok into Google
Maps (heh) and got 73 days. In reality I’m pretty sure that walk would take me
at least half a year. Probably a year.

~~~
chx
Yeah that's just distance divided by speed, I think. That's why I picked the
Pacific Trail data instead.

------
sverige
Unfortunately, Gnome Maps does not provide distances in miles. Yes, I could do
the math to convert these, but graphhopper already does that for me. So, it's
a nice app, but one missing feature makes it practically useless for me.

~~~
progval
That's an opportunity to start using the metric system!

------
infinity0
How does it compare to KDE Marble?

------
beenBoutIT
I don't understand why anyone would deliberately put themselves at a serious
disadvantage by using sub-par map/browser/etc technology in the hopes of
somehow limiting Google's ability to gather data. Unless you exist in a
vacuum, in the long-run what you're actually doing is failing to take
advantage of the data that Google's making accessible to you, at your own
expense.

------
squiggleblaz
Perhaps someone here can tell me something. I've had another rant, but this is
a case of plain wrong information which is different. But I don't know how to
go about fixing it.

In Australia, addresses are in the form [Street Number and Name], [Locality
(i.e. suburb, town, rural district), Postcode State]. Localities are therefore
very important. They need to be in any mapping database of Australia, because
people will enter addresses in that form because it's what the post office
uses and the local councils define.

But it looks like someone went to the Australian Bureau of Statistics and
downloaded the "State Suburb" boundaries and uploaded them into Open Street
Map. "State Suburbs" are not places and not used in addresses. They're
statistical regions used for reporting statistics. "State suburbs" are built
up of other statistical regions to approximate towns, suburbs and rural
districts. They sometimes correspond well enough at a broad level to suburbs
in metropolitan areas, but even in densely populated urban areas they can be
wrong because what makes statistical sense isn't always the administrative
border. In country areas, they take scant regard for locality boundaries.
"State Suburbs" should never have been uploaded to the database.

(There's an analagous problem with Local Government Areas, which are
statistical regions, and municipal districts, which are the territory of a
local council. But here the distinction is going to be rarely significant
because LGA boundaries are deliberately aligned to municipal district
boundaries. Consequently it's more a matter of the source of the authority
than the content of the data.)

You can go to data.gov.au and download locality boundaries for each state.
These are what is wanted.

But I have no idea how to do this. I don't really know where to begin. I once
asked someone for help about trying to find the right forum to ask for help.
But it's daunting. When these online databases contain work that is wrong,
it's so hard to fix them. People will be possessive of the work they've done.
It's possible some of them have been corrected. Others might have been
partially corrected. I just don't see how I can go through and fix them
without upsetting anyone.

The alternative seems to be to just accept that there's wrong data in there
because there's way too many to fix manually, even if I start now and keep
going in all my spare time for the rest of my life.

~~~
timv
That's not the case in my local area. The suburbs boundaries align quite
accurately with the boundaries provided on the local council's GIS. The OSM
boundaries are line-strings, so they don't have all the contours from the
council, but it's clearly a representation of the real boundary, not the ABS
boundary.

What areas are you looking at.

~~~
squiggleblaz
Hi. If you read my comment, I acknowledge that I can't simply replace the
existing data with an upload because they've probably been fixed - the problem
is that the suburb boundaries that are in OSM are a mish-mash of
suburb/locality boundaries and state suburbs boundaries. This [probably]
occurred as a matter of history because they started as "state suburbs" and
then people have corrected them in metropolitan areas. Consequently, today
they represent nothing - neither statistical areas nor address areas - because
you never know whether this particular area (a) represents the SS (b)
represents the locality (c) represents both because they're identical (d)
represents the SS on one front and the locality on the other.

One place to look at is Mirboo. I've just picked it to avoid yielding too much
PII, but it barely respects the existence of surrounding rural districts. (It
might even swamp them like others I know - I'm afraid I don't have my full
system here.) I know of other examples (locations to which I have an
attachment), but you'll forgive me if I avoid giving too much PII on a public
forum.

I'm afraid I can't give an exhaustive list because I haven't produced one.
Also because I anticipate that if I produce a report it will come to nothing -
I usually find that public databases are curated by people who will refuse to
accept that any major corrections are necessary because they've already worked
on the problem for years and therefore a major correction is taken to be an
insult.

As an example, if I can only produce examples in rural areas, I fear that
someone will say "we have thousands of correct addresses, but there's only
twenty addresses affected by this example, and thirty by that example - it's
not important enough". At that point it seems there's no point even producing
a report. OSM will just fall into the category of useless databases, where,
like Wikipedia, accuracy and convenience are not valued.

~~~
timv
I read your comment, but in the absense of any specific examples it was hard
to know the details of the problem.

The OSM Wiki contains a Data Catalogue for Australia.
[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Australian_Data_Catalogu...](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Australian_Data_Catalogue)

The issue right now is that both the PSMA data (that you want OSM to use) and
the ASGS data (that you infer it is using - and in some cases that might be
the source of the boundaries that were entered, but it is not officially in
use by OSM) are licensed under CC-BY, which is not 100% compatible with the
ODbL that OSM uses.

The necessary solution is to request an explicit waiver from the data
provider, which _has_ been requested for PSMA, but (as far as I know) never
received a response.

------
hjek
Gnome Maps looks great.

I wish they would add a local tile cache, like Marble. Not everyone are online
all the time.

~~~
audidude
There is one that was implemented in response to my request for it before
GUADEC last year.

I think it's still hidden behind an environment variable though due to some
uncertainty behind who the long term tile provider would be.

~~~
hjek
You know how to enable it?

------
madez
I'm disappointed that it offers no offline functionality. I'd like to download
the map and do all the pathing and rendering locally, because I don't want to
transmit over the internet what I'm looking at and where I want to go.

------
tjr225
The only google service I rely on is their map. I wish there were an
alternative.

~~~
craftyguy
Openstreetmap. It's an alternative that desperately needs your (and other's)
help. There will not be a 1:1 replacement for google maps unless folks put
forth some effort. Be a osm contributor today (it's ridiculously easy with
Osmand, or maps.me, or many many other clients.)

------
drivingmenuts
And yet, ads on the site are served up through Google.

------
everybodyknows
Kills your chosen theme's window preferences, in particular the ability to
resize by point-and-drag anywhere along the window border.

Gnome calls this behavior the "CSD Initiative":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16241923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16241923)

------
on_and_off
>on GNU/Linux

that sounds so strange to me.

Why target the desktop instead of web/Android/iOS ?

~~~
newnewpdro
People use GNU/Linux, why shouldn't they have a quality native map and
navigation application?

~~~
on_and_off
why would you use a navigation app on a desktop os ?

~~~
newnewpdro
You do realize that GNU/Linux also runs computers that aren't anchored to a
desk, right?

GNOME has been working on improving touch interface support with an eye
towards mobile devices for years now.

Personally I tend to look up where I'm going prior to leaving rather than
relying on turn-by-turn navigation systems. I load up a map, and use
navigation features to route my trip, and I personally consider this
navigation - just not realtime. Usually I write down the directions on a scrap
of paper. Not everyone willfully carries around a surveillance device, and
options like GNOME maps makes it possible to still have modern technology at
your disposal without participating in these highly invasive ad-funded
surveillance systems.

~~~
on_and_off
good for you, have a pat on the back

~~~
dang
Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

