GUI for 7" Touchscreen in a car
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I'm very interested in building a PC that I can install in my vehicle and I want it to have the option of using GPS Routing and Navigation, Web Browsing, videos, music and maybe a few other goodies. My biggest problem is that most software that is geared toward this purpose is built to run on Windows and it's non-free software. Everything I've found for GNU/Linux is old and doesn't seem to be maintained any longer.
Does anyone have any experience with this? Any links or suggestions on a good GUI would be greatly appreciated.
Lxlauncher
I'd suggest mapping software, rather than GPS software. GPS is a tracking device.
I'm looking into lxlauncher as that looks like it would be a good place to start. Thank you for that suggestion axgb.
Also, what do you think about using Sugar? It looks like it's very friendly for touch screens.
c107, I totally understand the consequences of being tracked when using GPS. This is something that I might not use at all, but if it is used at least it will be controlled by free software and I'll know exactly what it's doing and when it's off, it's off. Besides, I have a mobile tracking device already; it runs replicant but it is a tracking device none the less.
Isn't GPS receive-only? Isn't it safe unless software sends your
location via other interfaces? This is a problem for phone modems which
control GPS receivers, while they don't need it to know your location.
Personally, I'm more afraid of Google's wifi geolocalization service.
Lxlauncher is great, particuarly if you are using a low power PC. Lxlauncher looks similar-ish to the interface of various popular interfaces.
XBMC may also work, its great for the viewing of media, but I do not know it it is good for GPS, and similar.
The only issue is that LXDE, in it's default state, looks rather ugly.
What about Keyboards? Are you going to use an on-screen one, or a small external one?
If you do not require 100% free software, a Raspberry Pi could be a good idea, though the Raspberry Pi may not be fast enough for video streaming.
Raspberry Pi is dependent on non-free firmware blobs, see https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/reverse-engineering
Its graphic card is part of it.
Also, if he's hoping to get something 100% free, he should use something else than the raspberry pi, since it needs non-free software for booting. See : https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers
If he do not care for the blobs, he can use it.
Anyhow, I recommend using something else, like the ThinCan or the Beagleboard (which also needs non-free blobs, for the GPU)
I'd primarily use an on-screen keyboard but would sometimes use a small external keyboard. Overall I'd like to stay with a 100% free software solution so I'd rule out the Rasberry Pi.
I'm looking into lxlauncher but it doesn't look very customizable. I want to make the tabs taller and maybe align them on the side vertically rather than horizontally across the top. I'm going to dig further to see how I can do that.
I've also looked into using Enlightenment 17. They have a specific layout for small touch screen devices and for the most part it works pretty well. What's more is that it seems like you could modify it further without too much trouble. Also Enlightenment is known for its eye candy. Eye candy is not necessary but it never hurts when it doesn't impact performance, and in E17 it really doesn't impact performance.
My ultimate goal is to install something in my car that is very usable and feature-rich but runs as much free software as is possible. If I can't do it in free software then I won't be doing it basically. I'll update this thread when I have more progress...
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