GPS and laptops/desktops - more or less abandoned?

[David]

Briefly, I am struggling to get a GPS receiver working under Linux (Mint)
and Windows (7,8.1,10).

Windows 10 may be some obscure configuration issue. I soldier on.

Linux Mint I just installed gpsd and the GPS worked.
That is, until I tried to view maps in a web browser and use GPS.
At the moment it looks as though Ubuntu (and derivatives) build Firefox
and Chromium without the flag --enable-gpsd which mean that the browsers
cannot access gpsd to find a correct location.

All I can assume is that virtually nobody uses GPS devices on laptop (or
desktop) PCs anymore.

According to my reading, gpsd is fundamentally what connects the GPS
chipset under Android to all the mapping software, including the web
browsers.
So why not under Linux????

Baffled at the moment.


Cheers


Dave R


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[Alain Nonime]

Le 25/05/2020 à 20:00, David a écrit :
> Briefly, I am struggling to get a GPS receiver working under Linux (Mint)
> and Windows (7,8.1,10).
>
> Windows 10 may be some obscure configuration issue. I soldier on.
>
> Linux Mint I just installed gpsd and the GPS worked.
> That is, until I tried to view maps in a web browser and use GPS.
> At the moment it looks as though Ubuntu (and derivatives) build Firefox
> and Chromium without the flag --enable-gpsd which mean that the browsers
> cannot access gpsd to find a correct location.
>
> All I can assume is that virtually nobody uses GPS devices on laptop (or
> desktop) PCs anymore.
>
> According to my reading, gpsd is fundamentally what connects the GPS
> chipset under Android to all the mapping software, including the web
> browsers.
> So why not under Linux????
>

> Dave R
>
Hi,

Look at:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35979965/geolocation-from-gpsd

[David]

Please see:

<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1250922>

" "Unfortunately we cannot enable any non-Google location providers
by default on release builds. Our geolocation contract with Google
forbids us from using any other location source by default. Doug
is talking with various people to figure out if we could change that,
but that's a broader business/legal question.""

Posted in response to a query in alt.os.linux.mint.

So this appears to be "Why not Linux?".

It does seem weird that you can use GPS in Linux, just not in web browsers.


Cheers


Dave r

[Alain Nonime]

Le 26/05/2020 à 20:13, David a écrit :

> Please see:
>
> <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1250922>
>
> " "Unfortunately we cannot enable any non-Google location providers
> by default on release builds. Our geolocation contract with Google
> forbids us from using any other location source by default. Doug
> is talking with various people to figure out if we could change that,
> but that's a broader business/legal question.""
>
> Posted in response to a query in alt.os.linux.mint.
>
> So this appears to be "Why not Linux?".
>
> It does seem weird that you can use GPS in Linux, just not in web browsers.
>
>
> Cheers
>
>
> Dave r
>
>
>

Yes, it is not enabled by default, but the code is still there:
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/dom/system/linux

So if you build firefox with the gpsd option it should work.

[David]

OK.

Thanks.

SO far I can't recall building any Linux software from scratch (but it has
been a long time since I first started using Linux variants).

Is it a short learning curve, or a long one? :-)

Cheers



Dave R