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Announcements & Feedback

An action-packed episode awaits your eager ears. In Episode #119 of Linux in the Ham Shack, your intrepid hosts discuss the new Cinnamon desktop, Amazon's desire to make deliveries by unmanned drones, WEFAX and slow-scan television. On top of that, there is information on the best light weight desktop environments for your computer, and the announcement of a new contest where you can win a Raspberry Pi. Check out the Contest page for more details. Thanks as always for being a loyal listener, and have a very merry holiday season!

73 de The LHS Guys

Greetings, listeners! May we entice you with another episode of Linux in the Ham Shack? We sure hope so. In this installment, we have a special guest, Peter64, ubiquitous podcaster of Kernel Panic Oggcast fame. He gives us a decidedly downunda perspective on our topics for the evening. Speaking of topics, we have several: new releases, including Debian "Wheezy" and KDE, updates on previous topics including the Tucnak logging application and the Hamux live distro, based on CentOS. Finally, we take a look at a clever and addictive airplane tracker that uses FAA and ADS-B transponders to let you know where your loved ones are when they're at 35,000 feet. G'day from the team. We'll keep a shrimp on the barbie for ya.

73 de The LHS Guys

Introduction:

• Who has a drawl?

Announcements:

• Richard has been reading about Ubuntu 11.10, “Oneiric Ocelot”, due to be released on October 13th. Our hosts hope to have some sort of review in the near future. Richard is also considering trying KDE. (The version of Ubuntu with KDE as default is Kubuntu.)
• Look for another episode of Richard’s Radio Adventures in the near future. It’s recorded mobile, and Richard wonders how to reduce the road noise with Audacity. Russ offers some advice on training the noise removal plug-in for Audacity.
• Richard did not make it to the Belton hamfest this year, but maybe next spring. He’s looking forward to attending the Texoma Hamarama, October 21 – 22, 2011 at the Ardmore Convention Center, 2401 North Rockford Road, Ardmore, OK.
• Richard is recruiting hams for the Kaufman County (TX) ARES group. Please visit the KCARES website for more information.
• Richard re-tells the infamous badger story. Speaking of badgers, you can find the Kiss My Badger tee-shirt, and a lot of other good stuff, at the LHS store.

Feedback:

• Danny inquires about an easy-to-use distribution for a senior and computer novice, perhaps Linux Mint. Our hosts suggest Linux Mint and PCLinuxOS. Note that the Mint live CD does not include the codecs, but the DVD does. If you install from the CD, you can install the codecs later.
• Danny also asks if there is a way to ask the Mumble developers to support screen-reading software. Since Mumble isn’t a GTK-based application, it’s probably not well supported under Orca. You may wish to raise your concerns on the Mumble forum, or on IRC at irc.freenode.net, #mumble, or click the Live Chat Now button on the www.mumble.com website.
• Burt, K1OIK, left a comment regarding Episode 61 entitled “South of the Border”: “I’d like to go south of your borders!” We’re a little worried about you, Burt.
• Michael, KD8GIJ, asks for instructions on removing a dual-boot installation of Linux Mint if he decides he doesn’t like it. You can, of course, just wipe the whole drive and reinstall Windows. You may be able to boot the Windows install media and let it “repair” your installation. However, you don’t really need to remove grub; just make Windows the default and remove Linux from the grub menu. If that’s not acceptable, you’ll likely have to wipe and reinstall Windows to return it to the pre-Linux state.Other suggestions include:
  • install Mint as a virtual machine with Virtual Box.
  • use the Windows Ubuntu Installer (wubi) which will also allow you to uninstall Linux after testing.
  • install Linux to a flash drive and boot and run from that to try it out
  • make an image of the Windows drive before installing Linux, perhaps with PartImage or Clonezilla, and you’ll have an easy means of returning to the pre-Linux-install state.
• John “The Nice Guy” Spriggs, G7VRI, asks about a live Linux distribution reviewed in Episode 62 that contained software to run EchoLink. (I think he’s referring to Andy’s Ham Radio Linux CD). svxlink is the Linux-native EchoLink client, but it is CLI-driven. The Windows client does run well under Wine. You may want to look at qtel, another Echolink client. It’s an older application. In fact, svxlink is based on Qtel.
• John also wonders if the music played on the show is Creative Commons licensed. While most of the music is Creative Commons or podsafe, the music in Episode 62 is not CC or podsafe, but Russ did have permission from the artists to play them.
• John pointed out that the description tags in the podcast audio files were empty. Thanks, John, and rest assured that Russ will be adding descriptions as time permits.
• By the way John, please contact Richard at the email address below as you may be able to help him with some music for another project.

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:

• “Out of Sight” by White Light Riot from the album “Atomism,” courtesy of Jamendo.
• “Saving Lucidity” by The Way I Am, courtesy of Jamendo.

And finally the podcast is caught up. All the back episodes have been edited and released and now Russ is taking a break, breathing a little easier and hiding from the hell sheep. In this episode, the hosts talk about the new release of Ubuntu (formal review coming later), the KDE desktop, doing noise cancellation with Audacity and much more. They address feedback from listeners and encourage everyone to support the show by calling in some voice comments, making a donation, becoming a member or purchasing show-related merchandise. Sorry for the advertisement, but sometimes it just has to be done. Thank you for being a listener. Peace, love, ham radio and Linux. Good times.

73 de The LHS Guys