5 of the Best Tools to Streamline Travel in Linux

A photograph of a person using a laptop in a forest.

Managing travel details is one of the most time-intensive parts of planning a trip. The amount of tickets, bookings, and maps to keep track of can be overwhelming if you’re not used to traveling. Here we show you 5 of the best tools in Linux that can help streamline your traveling prep and save you time in the long run.

1. KDE Itinerary

KDE Itinerary is an all-in-one travel assistant for Linux. It provides a comprehensive overview of your travel itinerary, lists your booked tickets, and shows the weather forecast for your entire trip. This makes KDE Itinerary invaluable to anyone who wants to manage and keep track of their entire trip in a single app.

A screenshot showing the statistics page for KDE Itinerary.

One of the selling points of KDE Itinerary is that it works well with existing KDE tooling. For instance, the app can pull your booking details and tickets from KMail and manage the different trip schedules from a CalDAV server.

To top it off, KDE Itinerary has a mobile app that can link to a computer using KDE Connect. This allows you to quickly check on your travel schedule as well as display your e-tickets for inspection.

A screenshot showing the companion Android app for KDE Itinerary.

Good to know: KDE is more than just a travel itinerary app. Learn some of the best system administration tools for KDE.

2. Railway

Railway is a simple app that displays the available routes and schedules for some of the most popular train stations in the world. It works by pooling data from online sources and compiling it in a sleek interface that’s both pleasant and easy to use.

A screenshot showing a sample train timetable in the Railway app.

Railway can also store the routes that you’ve looked into for later viewing. This can be useful when planning your trip as it allows you to compare different routes and timings for each train line quickly.

Lastly, Railway has an adaptive interface. It can quickly adjust the content of its window to always show the relevant information. This makes it incredibly mobile-friendly and attractive to users that use Linux-based smartphones such as the Pinephone.

3. Organic Maps

Organic Maps is an offline-first mapping application for Linux, Android, and iOS. Unlike Google and Apple Maps, Organic Maps uses the collaborative OpenStreetMap database for its topographical and location data. This makes it more detailed and elaborate than your regular Google Maps entry.

A screenshot showing the map of Intramuros in Organic Maps.

Another unique feature of Organic Maps is that you can save the map data for cities, regions, and continents straight to your device. This is useful if you’re traveling to a place with poor network connectivity and can’t access online mapping services.

Aside from that, Organic Maps can also import and export KML files for its internal bookmarks. This is important since it allows you to migrate your saved data from one map program to another.

FYI: learn more about some of the best alternatives to Google Maps available today.

4. Marble

Marble is a desktop map viewer and general travel knowledge program for Linux. It provides a 3D visualization of the Earth, displays a variety of map types, and supports OpenStreetMap addresses and landmarks.

A screenshot showing a detailed globe inside KDE Marble.

On top of its brilliant map viewer features, Marble can also display the weather forecast for a particular area and a real-time look at that region’s cloud coverage. This can be an appealing feature if you’re either hiking or walking on a trail.

Lastly, Marble also has a pretty good integration with Wikipedia. This allows it to pull in data about notable areas and famous landmarks, which makes it great for discovering places to visit during your travel.

A screenshot showing the Wikipedia entry for Intramuros inside KDE Marble.

Tip: keep track of your travel notes by creating your own wiki using Notion.

5. ulogger

Ulogger is a powerful self-hosted GPS tracker server with a companion Android app for Linux. It allows you to convert your smartphone into a capable tracker that creates detailed waypoints you can review on an easy-to-understand dashboard.

A screenshot showing the console screen for ulogger.

One of the key features of ulogger is that it can do live tracking and statistics for multiple mobile clients. This can be useful if you’re traveling with multiple people and want to analyze your GPS tracks while on the go.

Apart from that, ulogger is also an incredibly lightweight server daemon. This makes it easy to deploy on even the cheapest VPS available today. As such, ulogger can be a privacy-respecting alternative to popular GPS loggers such as Garmin Explore and Strava.

Exploring and installing some of the best traveling apps in Linux is just one of the things that you can do with this wonderful operating system. Learn how you can host your own budgeting app using OnTrack.

Image credit: Anastasia Nelen via Unsplash. All alterations and screenshots by Ramces Red.

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Ramces Red
Ramces Red - Staff Writer

Ramces is a technology writer that lived with computers all his life. A prolific reader and a student of Anthropology, he is an eccentric character that writes articles about Linux and anything *nix.