I had some strange hardware detection setting this up in Arch Linux. I figure there was an obscure package that needed to be installed. Instead, I used to available hardware space to put Crunch Bang on here which is my favorite standby OS and I used it before with Foxtrot.
So... with Crunchbang running, I installed GPSD from the repos which is just a daemon that keeps up communication with the GPS device. Gmapcatcher was not in the repos, but on their site I found a Deb file to install from.
I just typed mapcatcher to start it from the terminal and configured the settings to use Gpsd. This allowed the program to use my old Microsoft Streets & Trips sensor and got me GPS tracking.
The other important side to this program is the mapping. Unlike Streets and Trips, it does not come with full zoomable map. It has to pull that info from places like OpenStreetMaps while online.
If you preview the key areas of your trips or use download options, it can save or "cache" the mapping areas you used so you can use them again later offline. This solved a problem I wasn't sure how to workout with Foxtrot.
It also has a command line downloader where you can tell it to grab the map tiles from a specific city.
I mostly used this during the beginning of my trip and especially at the end. I drove all the way from Michigan to Birmingham, Alabama. I had previously made it a point to make it grab important details on the Birmingham area which it did hold for later.
So far, I'm actually pleased with the results and the program worked as described. I decided to come to Birmingham to look for work after finishing college. I can definitely imagine using the command line downloader to build me a detailed map of Birmingham so I have a functional GPS while I get familiar with the area.
One last note: I did not see very good tools for auto-generating a Route between points,, but maybe I need to test this more.
http://code.google.com/p/gmapcatcher/downloads/list