YO3DAN-PA2LA's RADIO dedicated page

Linux or Android in the shack Home

I'm an enthousiast Registered Linux User #254818 .

Linux it's a FREE and fully documented operating system. All the source codes for all programs are available, too. A user can have full control of his computer. Linux runs well on older hardware, it is far more stable than any version of Windows to date and it doesn't violate your privacy (as Windows sometimes does). There is plenty of very good software (both commercial and free) available. Moving from Windows to Linux takes just some re-learning.

I started using Linux more than 15 years ago, with Red Hat distribution. A short period of time I "tasted" the Slackware distribution, then for another few years I've used Debian. After that, I've discovered that SuSE is very friendly.

Chronologically, the lastest distribution which I enjoy is Kubuntu (Ubuntu + KDE). It seems that it is easier to mantain and to find the packages which I need, without any need to compile them.

My favorite distributions are:

- Kubuntu is an Ubuntu-derived distribution, which further on is based on Debian. In my opinion, Debian is the most suitable Linux distribution for students, engineers, radio amateurs and technical interested people.
The Kubuntu are made up of Ubuntu's base plus KDE. This is one of the best replacement for Widows operating system. You can run it from CD (live), you can install it on hard disk or on USB memory stick.

- Damn Small Linux (DSL) a small distribution which fits in a business-card CD (50Mb) and which you may keep it in your wallet. This is a versatile mini desktop oriented Linux distribution. Regrettably, last time when this distribution was updated was in 2008.

- Puppy Linux is another Linux small distribution (~130 Mb) which could be used to run many ham radio software applications on a small computer (e.g. netbook).

Ham Radio Linux software

I would like to mention here some of the Linux software which I like and I think also that might be useful to any radioamateurs:

CQRLog by Petr OK2CQR and Martin OK1RR
GPredict by Alex OZ9AEC
GNURadio is a free software development toolkit. The list of the typical applications based on this toolkit includes: software defined radio, radio astronomy, monostatic radar, radio streaming, FLEX pager decoder, radio channel sounder, full-rate GSM vocoder, etc.
SPLAT! (Signal Propagation, Loss And Terrain) an analysis tool for the radio spectrum between 20 MHz and 20 GHz developed by John KD2BD;
AI9NL Harv's Hamshack Hack a distribution (live Linux CD); Take a look to this screenshot !
AFU-Knoppix a distribution (which also can be used as a live Linux CD) made by Hubert DG7MGY. CW, Packet-radio, PSK31, RTTY, SSTV and many other software packages are included. Regrettably, the site hosting this project was closed, but the last version v.6.0.1 is still available for download from other sites (e.g. Softpedia).

Radio Linux is a big repository containing almost all packages related to Ham Radio. If you are looking for logging or contesting software, for digital modes, for software to control your rig, or for anything else, then you should start from here.

Ham Radio Android software

Android is an operating system based on the Linux kernel developed by Google and dedicated to mobile devices (smartphones, laptops, tablets, etc). Currently, there are over 200,000 apps available for Android. I use several of them for my ham radio activities.