Good Morning Leif & All: Leif, thanks for the note. Actually it was a combination of the two. I spent quite a bit of time(months) just trying to get to the point where I could get Linrad to run. There was some kind of a library needed to get the display to work properly. Some Linux distributions contained it, and some didn't. Once I finally figured out what I needed and got it downloaded, I couldn't figure out how to unzip and install it. After quite a while I finally figured out how to do that, then the dang thing said I didn't have permission to do something or the other; I don't remember exactly what. I never did figure out the permission thing, but somehow finally got Linrad to run; kinda. At that point the complexity of Linrad caved in on me and I just said screw it. I decided I could much more easily go through life without Linrad and go back to the relative simplicity of Windows, and wait for Winrad.
At least in my mind, the decision was a good one. Yesterday I downloaded the latest version of Winrad, and sent the output of a 20 meter Softrock 5 to it. In a very short time I had things up and running. It works beautifully and my blood pressure was normal when I finished. I have a 96 kHz sample rate and bandwidth from a $25 Soundblaster Live(internal) audio card, all on a 900 mHz Athalon home brew machine. Success!! Regrettably, all of this bliss may come to an end if/when Microsoft stops supporting Win XP. So far I am unimpressed with Vista, and what I perceive as it's failure to support much of today's existing software. As you may already suspect, I believe in the KISS philosophy, and also in the idea that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". 73, Mike, W5UC At 09:28 PM 3/8/2007, you wrote: >Hello Mike, > > > I spent around 3 months in Linux Hell trying to get Linrad going > > and vowed that Linux would never again run on any machine I own. I > > plan to keep that vow. > > >From the conversations we had, only two mails in my files, >my impression is that you had no difficulties with Linux. >Everything was related to Linrad. > >Linrad is very different from Winrad, it is far more complicated >to use and it can be set up for many different purposes. From >what you wrote my impression is that you found Linrad useless >because it was too complicated - but that has nothing to do with >the operating system. You can run Linrad under Windows if you >want to avoid "Linux Hell" but it would have changed nothing. >Linrad behaves exactly the same and puts the same requirements >on the user regardless of the operating system. > >Linrad will allow reception of signals that you can not receive >with Winrad or any other receiver in case you have heavy powerline >noise at the same time as you have strong local signals close >in frequency. It does not come for free. Linrad is not mature >enough to do everything automatically for you. The reason is that >I am looking for usages that we not yet have the hardware for >and I have purpously made Linrad make no assumption about what >hardware the user might have connected. > >Generally Linux is far easier to install than Windows if you >have found a scrap computer with unknown hardware inside. >I have solid experience with Linux, Win 98 and Win 2000. >To make Windows work one has to find out what the hardware >really is, then one might be lucky to find drivers on >the Internet. With Linux everything is usually included >and installed automatically. It is of course very >different with new computers where the manufacturer >supplies a CD with Windows drivers for exactly the >hardware you bought. Linux may not have them (yet) and >that is surely a problem. > >Have a look here: >http://www.sm5bsz.com/linuxdsp/install/distrib.htm >Linrad runs under every Linux distribution that I have >tested (29 of them) and I have no reason to believe >it would not run on any other distribution. I have >tried several computers from Pentium 133 MHz up to >modern ones. Surely there are difficulties in >installing modern Linux distributions on old >computers that do not have enough memory - but >Windows is not difficult, it is simply impossible. > >Linux has better real-time properties as compared to >Windows 2000 (and Win 98 is bad) I only have Windows XP >on modern laptops so I do not know if it is better. >(I refuse to pay for making a test with XP on elderly >computers) On modern computers any operating system >is perfectly adequate for SDR at bandwidths of 100 >kHz and below so it does not really matter. > >I do not think the OS as such is much of a problem. >The real problem is how to find well working drive >routines for the better hardware that we will get >in the future. If manufacturers decide to keep the >internal architecture secret and just supply a CD >with drivers for Windows Vista we will have to >use it until we have software that emulates Vista >for the drive routines. This is what we have to do >to make modern WLAN cards work under Linux..... > >73 > >Leif / SM5BSZ > > > > >_______________________________________________ >Winrad mailing list >[email protected] >http://winrad.org/mailman/listinfo/winrad_winrad.org > > >-- >No virus found in this incoming message. >Checked by AVG Free Edition. >Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.7/713 - Release Date: >3/7/2007 9:24 AM "age & treachery will overcome youth & skill" http://www.suddenlink.net/pages/w5uc/ _______________________________________________ Winrad mailing list [email protected] http://winrad.org/mailman/listinfo/winrad_winrad.org
