At home, I am using a PC since many years which runs on Windows XP or more lately on Vista. It is not the purpose of this page to debate about the choice of Windows or Linux as operating system. Recently, I decided to fully migrated my PC towards Linux. The unique argument for fully migrating to Linux as a standard plateforme for me, was to still being able to visualise my "igc" files provided by the loggers. "Igc" files contains all the information captured by the logger during a gliding flight especially the GPS position (coordinates and altitude) within a time frame.

Not being able to visualise igc file would be for me a major argument not to migrate to Linux.

Fortunately there are 2 software offering the possibilities to analyse igc files i.e. KFLOG and GPLIGC. Unfortunately, KFLOG is no more maintained since many years. But....on a regular basis, GPLIGC software is offering new releases with great functionalities.

GPLIGC software and its major functionality (sub-program) named openGLIGCexplorer (Ogie) provide powerful functionalities for analysing igc files in 2 dimensions as well in 3 dimensions.

It is only 3 months now (June 2009) that I am using Linux (Kubuntu 9.04). It is not easy to migrate and forget about Windows reflexes for working under Linux. Installing software on Linux is done in an other way than on Windows Operating System (OS).

Installing GPLIGC was not obvious for a beginner but I got fantastic help form the GPLIGC developer Hannes Krüger. The last release available is release 1.7 dated  22 april 2009. This last release even contain functionalities about oxygen consumption for high altitude flights.

So, do not be frightened by installing GPLIGC on your PC (Linux) even if you are coming from the Windows world.

I have also to admit that there exist a Windows version of GPLIGC but I did not try it.