AmateurRadio.com

Today Linux in the Ham Shack is graced with the appearance of an additional co-host: Harrison, VE2HKW, an amateur radio operator from Canada and sometimes host of the Mintcast, a podcast for Linux users from members of the Linux Mint community.

In the first segment, our hosts discuss three very useful Linux utilities for analyzing system performance on your desktop or server: iftop, ifstat and iotop. Get in-depth knowledge of how to use these tools in order to make your machine run better with fewer bottlenecks. And since Harrison is from a whole other country, it was decided he should tell all of us about amateur radio from a Canadian perspective, including licensing, regulations and operating practices.

Hamvention 2012 is coming up very soon. Please donate to the fund if you can. We hope to see everyone there!

73 de The LHS Guys (and Harrison, too)

Introduction:

• Only 317 days until the end of the world as we know it!

Announcements:

• The Black Sparrow Media application for iPad, iPhone and iPod has been submitted to the iTunes store. It is just awaiting validation from Apple, which may take up to two weeks. We’ll let everyone know when it’s available.
• Special Event Station W0S (Whiskey Zero Sierra) will be operating from the Titanic Branson Museum from April 13-15, 2012, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. Russ, K5TUX, will be operating the station at some point.

Feedback:

• Scott, AD7MI, asks for help linking APRS and his his Davis Vantage Pro2 weather station with Xastir. Our hosts suggest trying one or both of these:
  • Meteo – Davis weather station platform software for Linux. You can subscribe to the Meteo mailing list by sending a subscription request to [email protected]. It has been several years since Meteo was updated, and is still not at version 1.0. You must download the .tar file from the web site as it does not appear in the distribution repositories.
  • wview- Cross-platform weather station software. It does need an internet connection if you are going to contribute information to various weather sites, such as:
    • Citizen Weather Observer Program (CWOP)
    • Weather Underground
    • Weather For You
    • awekas

    This program is under active development. Even if it requires a work-around to perform as you wish, it may be worth the trouble. If you’ve ever configured a Linksys router, the web interface of wview looks a lot like that. wview has a support site via Google Groups at http://groups.google.com/group/wview.

Let us know how you get on, Scott!

We received a donation from Bill H. Thanks, Big Poppa!

Contact Info:

• Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].
• Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
• Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
• Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
• Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
• LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
• Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

• To be added.

After our quick renumbering, we come now to Episode #076. It didn’t start out as an all-feedback episode, but that’s how it wound up. The best part is, we had such good feedback from our listeners it made an entire show. As it also happens, most of our discussion revolves around digital mode communication for amateur radio using Linux. We touch on D-Star, Echolink, IRLP, Allstar Link and more. If you’re interested in using computers to connect to your radios and talk around the world using a multitude of digital technologies, including VoIP, this is the episode for you.

Please keep those donations coming in for our Hamvention Fund, if you’re able. We want to be a part of Hamvention and we hope you will be, too. Thank you for all you do.

In case anyone has seen weird behavior in the RSS feeds or on the Web sites, let me explain:  I have renumbered episodes after #018.  Back then I recorded a couple of updates from OSCON 2010 and called them Episode #018A and Episode #019A.  Not long after that, the discrepancy in numbering started to eat at me.  Now a couple of years later, I have decided to do something about it.  All of the episodes have been renumbered, meaning that we’re a couple of episodes ahead of where we were.  This will probably cause a little bit of confusion in the short term but overall I am happy that it is done.  Nothing else has changed, just the numbering scheme. Thank you for your patience while we go through this brief transition period.

73 de Russ, Linux in the Ham Shack

Introduction:

• We’re a little light on content, but we’ll make up for it with enthusiasm!

Announcements:

• Ronny, K4RJJ, will be the LHS ambassador at the Dalton Hamfest, February 25, 2012, in Dalton, GA. Stop by and say hello.

Topics:

• Linux Mint 12 Review
  • Richard has been using Ubuntu for some time, but he’s been unhappy with the latest version. He’s rediscovered Linux Mint! Version 12 is out, with Gnome 3, Gnome 2, MATE, and Cinnamon, and he gives a brief review.
  • His primary needs: browser, email, Audacity, XChat, and a few others.
  • Using the Gnome 3 desktop, as a desktop fills with icons, a new desktop is automatically created.
  • By moving the mouse to a hot corner, you’ll see a high-level view of all your open applications.
  • Russ has been using Linux Mint Debian Edition, so he’s missing out on the Gnome 3 goodies, at least for now.
  • Our hosts then drift into a discussion of various desktop managers and visual effects.
• WINE: Wine Is Not an Emulator
  • WINE is a collection of libraries for Linux that support Windows library calls from a Windows application.
  • EchoLink, for example, is a Windows application works quite well under WINE on Linux.
  • If you can’t find a native Linux application that does what you want, you may find that WINE will allow you to run the Windows program.
  • There are a couple of different versions of WINE, all based on the core version of WINE.
  • Cedega: a version of WINE that supports a variety of Windows games.
  • CrossOver: a version of WINE that originally focused on supporting business applications such as Internet Explorer and MS Office, but has also expanded to include some games and running Windows applications on a Mac.
  • Richard browses the list of ham radio applications in the WINE application database.
  • Russ talks about installation and configuration:
    • Red Hat/Fedora: yum install wine
    • Debian-based: apt-get install wine
    • Some repositories may not have the most recent version of WINE (1.4 at the time of recording).
    • Under System Tools (in Linux Mint, or Debian) there is a WINE Configuration tool.
    • To install a Windows program under WINE, download the Windows installer application. At the command line, type “wine [name of installer executable]“, and the setup program should proceed just as with Windows. A program icon should appear under the WINE program folder, and the program will, hopefully, run just like in Windows.
    • Some Windows programs will run just fine under WINE; others won’t. Give your favorite a try and see!
  • One of the most-wanted ham radio applications, Ham Radio Deluxe v. 5.0, does not run at all under WINE. If you can find a copy of HRD v. 4, it should work under WINE. Remember, too, the native Linux application fldigi does much of what HRD would do.
  • Russ has also tried the N1MM Logger under WINE, and it worked fine.
  • The Winetricks tool might help get a Windows application running under WINE.
  • The WineHQ forum is a good resource for help.

Feedback:

• We had a donation from William A. Thank you!
• Leif, KC8RWR, continues a comment dialog about the origin of CUPS in Episode 67.
• G8FXM, mentioned LHS in his blog. Thanks, David.
• The Hoosier Hills Ham Club linked to the LHS site and we linked back. Thanks to W.W., KB9TMP.

Contact Info:

• Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].
• Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
• Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
• Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
• Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
• LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
• Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

• To be added.

The Black Sparrow Media mobile application which lets you see all kinds of content related to programs on the BSM Network, is now available in iTunes.  Simple search for “black sparrow” on your Apple mobile device and you can download it for free.  The application was previously released for Android and is available for any device with access to the Android Marketplace.  You can even use the app to listen to live stream shows of Linux in the Ham Shack! New programs are coming to the Black Sparrow Media Network in the very near future, so stay tuned for that as well.

This episode we left up to the listeners because we hadn’t had enough time to prepare some content for ourselves. While waiting for some input, Richard decided to give an impromptu review of the improvements in Gnome 3 and his assessment of the technology, and where he thinks it’s going from here. You might be surprised by his analysis.

After that, we had a request to discuss WINE in a little more depth than perhaps we had touched on in previous episodes. So we take a fairly broad view of the WINE project, how to use it for your applications, what its can and can’t do, and how it can benefit you.

As a quick reminder, Hamvention in Dayton is coming up quickly, from May 18-20. As always, if you can spare a few bucks, quid, euros, drachmas, or whatever currency you currently use to help send LHS out to Ohio for the weekend, we’d love to see everyone there. Any little bit will help.

Thank you to all of our listeners, as always. We couldn’t and wouldn’t do it without you!

73 de The LHS Guys