Hello. I am an amateur radio enthusiast. I recommend that you stay away from the less well known distributions. Stick to Fedora and Ubuntu. I know from experience that every ham has a horror story about how they tried some obscure distribution and gave up and went back to Windows or even DOS (hams can be very conservative, despite the technical nature of the hobby) because they couldn't get any documentation on it. I know that you can argue that many of the obscure distributions are derivatives of more mainstream systems, but most hams won't know that and more importantly they won't care.
Stick to the mainstream distributions Fedora Ubuntu Xbuntu (once again from experience most hams like to keep old hardware going) Make sure you know how to configure serial ports, most ham equipment still uses serial ports not USB. An inability to configure serial ports is the number one thing that causes computer problems for hams on any OS. This is hard to over state. There are alot of hams who got their DX Cluster and TNC working on a DOS machine in 1988, and they have never changed because of this. Make sure you know how to configure the line in on the distributions sound control panel. The major trend in ham radio right now is the use of the sound card as a digital signal processor. Try to be up to date on GPS related technology in Linux. Amateur radio has a mode known as APRS. This is basically a GPS receiver attached to a radio through a device known as a TNC. This enables hams to broadcast their position, and other data like weather information. This makes GPS and the processing and display of GPS data a big deal for alot of hams. Especially members of ARES which is an disaster relief organization that uses ham radio extensively. There are a lot of ARES people in Calgary. If you want an interesting demo program check out some sotware called Xastir. It displays APRS data on linux machines. Data sources can include a TNC getting data directly from an over the air APRS network, or internet gateways to the APRS network (this is how I demoed the software a few years ago). The data stream from the APRS->Internet gateway is not huge and you can filter it down so some kind of 3G/Edge mobile internet card could probably work as your connectivity. You don't need to be licensed to do this. I could probably do a presentation on all of this in a few months if anybody is interested. I have relatively limited time over the next few weeks to assist with the table at the flew market. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of bogi Sent: September-12-09 1:42 AM To: CLUG General Subject: Re: [clug-talk] OT: Amateur Radio - Flea Market I am for the installFest .. The main caveat is power ... can we get power and rule the world or not :-) We need power ... and it is too early in the morning :-) Szemir On September 12, 2009 01:24:44 am TekBudda wrote: > bogi wrote: > > well, so far no contact yet. The donation box sounds like a good idea. I > > can burn a bunch of Mandriva And Fedora DVDs ... Now , given that the > > event has some time , what is we order some Ubuntu disks, they could be > > here by then ... Also, assuming we will not have power, could arrange for > > an inverter or something we could present Linux on a running computer ... > > Maybe if we can has power :-) > > Cheers > > Szemir > > > > Ps.:There is opportunity to prepare and organize before bill C60 is > > passed you know ... i mean the flea market opens ... > > Just a thought, but maybe we could do a mini InstallFest there as well. > Take one of the distro's & show people how easy it is to install > live! The Linpus disk I have are a Fedora deriatve and are all > pre-labelled. I have at least a couple hundred. I haven't had a lot of > time to play with them yet, but am hoping to on of these days! LOL > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > **Please remove these lines when replying _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
