Yet Another Reason I Like Linux: Panorama Pictures

Under Windows, I had a heck of a time finding decent panorama stitching software. At least, software that didn't cost a gazillion dollars. Under Ubuntu, I appear to have found a great panorama stitching program that is free. It's called "Hugin Panorama". It's actually two different pieces of software; one is the backend processor (called "Hugin Batch Processor") and the other is the frontend GUI (called "Hugin Panorama Creator"). I installed both from the repositories. In this case, it was using the Ubuntu Software Center (Applications -> Ubuntu Software Center, then do a search on "hugin").
The first panorama I created was of a Civil War battlefield (Bolivar Heights) just outside of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Personally, I think it came out stunningly.

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The latest requires a short bit of digression. I used to be a volunteer firefighter. One of the first people I befriended when I joined the department goes by the nickname of "Tink". "Tink" is still with the department, but I'm not. But he wants me back. To try to push me in that direction, he suggested I stop by a building right next to where we have breakfast every Sunday morning. This particular establishment burned down due to the carelessly-thrown away ashtray. I stopped by. But I also decided to see how well Hugin would do with some cellphone pictures. Again, in my most humble opinion, I think it came out real well.

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Consider this. I took this with an LG260 Rumor camera phone. If you don't know anything about this phone, know this: it takes crappy pictures. Yeah, they might tout it as a "1.3 megapixel", but those 1.3 million pixels have obviously had a hard life. I know, I know. It wasn't meant to take studio quality pictures. But, of all of the panorama stitching programs I've had, they always wanted good quality pics. Obviously, Hugin works differently. Or just better. Or differently better. Whatever. I just know it does a great job. (Just finished dropping a few dollars to the developer. Good work like this needs to be rewarded.)
Also, I didn't know the specs on the camera. All panorama programs need to know some basic camera info. Well, Hugin wants to know either the camera's horizontal field of view (shortened as "HFOV") or its focal length and length multiplier. Hell, I felt lucky the manual told me it was "1.3 megapixel". Forget about anything more detailed such as the focal length. I was able to take out a piece of paper, a pencil and a ruler, then actually calculate the horizontal field of view of the camera. It's approximately 52 degrees of HFOV. That works out to a 35 mm lense with a 1x length multiplier. Go figure. Punching that in allowed me to make the panorama shown above.
Hey, Hugin people, you guys rock!