History, the World, and KDE: Discovering Marble

Since I migrated to Linux in 2010, there have been two constants.  The first one is, of course, adaptation to new programs.  The second one, the question on whether Gnome is better than KDE.

I recently participated in a survey on Google+ to that effect and, thanks to the survey, I remembered my experience with KDE.

I like KDE not because I think it is superior than other DEs, but because I find its flexibility very convenient for my workflow.  The first Linux distro that I tried was Kubuntu, but never installed it and became a Mandriva 2009 user.  Needless to say, I was using KDE then.

Today, most of the distros I use have KDE, but I also use LXDE (with PicarOS) and Enlightenment (Elive).

Although I felt satisfied, I was missing Google Earth, which I recently had discovered and, those days, only ran on Windows.

KDE's option was Marble.

This is the globe that greets you when you first open Marble.

Marble's OpenStreet map. 

However, I saw it as a very humble substitute for Google Earth, so, when Google Earth became available on Linux, I forgot about Marble... Until yesterday.

I did not know that one could load new maps for Marble and that made all the difference.  With Marble, I can now visualize the conception people had of the world in 1492, before America made it to the map.

Behaim globe, 1492.  The oldest cartographic representation of the Earth known

Behaim globe, 1492.  You can see sea monsters, but America is NOT there.

You can also see the the historical progression of the charting of America:

Cantino's map (1502).  America was rather small back then.

Schagen's globe (1689).  California was an island, the South Sea to the left of Central America!

 For me, these are irreplaceable jewels.

To download them , simply open Marble and press Ctrl+N (or go the the Menu, File, download Maps.  You can get many more maps of the Earth...or the Moon... or of other planets and their satellites.