I, like others, am attempting to find alternatives to Google Earth, and also atlas software that can be used in an offline mode. Seemed like Marble might be the ticket. I have spent the good part of the day evaluating the software. It seems rather evident that the project is no longer being tended to for some time now, which is a pity. Obviously a great deal of work had been put into the software but it gradually seems to have broken more and more over time. I have installed 2.2 on a Windows 10 system.

Unfortunately, many features do not seem to work or are incompletely developed.

All that being said, however, I do want to report that I have a somewhat workable and still useful configuration that is operating, and it does provide me some semblance of an alternative to Google (I won't have anything to do with that company to the highest degree possible). The one map that seems to be working quite well is the topographic map, i.e., OpenTopoMap. It is the only map that I have any real success with but it is decent with good info. Bookmarks and placemarks do seem to be a bit squirrely still, but I get usable service out of the placemarks after playing with the mouse for an hour or so to see what works and doesn't work. There is also some retention of info it seems in an offline mode, which is important to me. The documentation is incomplete and does not exactly match the current status of the program, but it can point in the right direction in at least some cases.

The biggest drawback seems to be the lack of completion and conformance with the manual on searching of place names and locations. I seem to be past the 1200 location minimal database referenced in the manual, but hardly able to find all locations desired. Any moderate size town seems to be usually located, but not enough smaller towns to satisfy most folk's expectations I am sure. Also if there are two towns (or more) by the same name, it seems to pick just one and the other just seem to disappear into the ether.

I also managed to get the ham radio users (APRS) dataset to load in (great feature also), once again after juggling things around for quite a while and finding an alternative port number that works.

Many posts on the forum pointing out the obvious deficiencies have gone completely unattended to over the years, so not much choice by users except abandonment.


So Marble looks to have been a great project, but it looks to me like it is only of value to those that will doggedly avoid Google, Mapquest, etc and other mainstream online services. Great work was done here, and it does amaze me that something like this is so hard to find. Thanks for all the great work that was done here and if you know that I have missed a smooth and comprehensive download and version somewhere, please do let me know. Support and info looks pretty sparse to me from 2018 onward...


Best regards, CEC