ham radio RPMs for SUSE [was: Re: AX-25 software that works on Fedora Core 4?]

["Robert Steinhäußer" <robert@steinhaeusser.com>]

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Hello all,

Douglas Cole wrote:
> I also noticed that version 10 seems to be ignoring amateur radio as well,
> and was wondering if anyone on the list knows why SuSE dropped the "Ham
> Radio" package group?

Joerg Reuter, DL1BKE <jreuter@suse.de> gave some information about the ham 
radio packages in the SUSE LINUX distribution on the (German) "suse-ham" 
mailing list. You can find his original message in the archives or ask me; I 
can send you a copy. Here is a rough translation from German.

You can find RPMs for SUSE 9.3 here:

	ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/ham/9.3-i386

(or a SUSE mirror of your choice). You can add this directory as an 
installation source (command line: "yast install_source") and then install 
using YaST.  

Joerg can only update these packages in his spare time. He has no time for 
testing and calls them "highly inofficial".

The main reason for no longer including ham radio programs in the distribution 
is that many of these programs aren't under active development and it is 
getting more and more difficult to let them work under a new distribution. 
Package maintanance is simply costing too much effort, and many programs only 
compile on the PC architecture and thus require even more effort from Joerg 
as packager and from the autobuild team. Additionally, the potential costs 
for quick and effective handling of security problems are quite high.

Joerg also sees an advantage for himself by continuing these packages on his 
own: During the last weeks of a new release's beta phase he only has to check 
once that these packages compile -- and no longer (in extreme cases) weekly, 
every time somebody checks in a new compiler, GLIBC, QT oder KDE update.

73, Robert DL1NC/N9KBK

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