Re: newbie question - hamlib and gMFSK

[Martin Ewing <martin@aa6e.net>]

Curt,

Sorry to give any offense, slight or otherwise. My remarks came from a 
search for keyboard/digital Linux software for PSK, RTTY and related 
modes. I just don't find anything that compares feature-wise with 
leading Windows apps. That's not surprising, given that the Linux market 
is small and that we Linux folks are likely to want software that is 
"free as in beer" and "free as in speech".

[Personally, I'd be willing to pay for good Linux products. However, if 
I develop Linux-specific ham software, it won't be for profit or for 
glory in the larger ham world.]

I confess to near total ignorance of APRS, but I'm glad to hear of good 
work being done there.

In a way you prove my point, however. I wouldn't count Cygwin support as 
"Windows compatibility". [Although I have claimed that Python support 
is. Go figure.] IMO, we need to use wxWidgets (wxwindows.org) or similar 
cross-platform GUI framework to get apps that work nicely across 
Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms. (Java is an alternative, too.) We can 
handle the GUI part, but does anyone have a cross-platform soundcard 
strategy?

73, Martin, AA6E

Curt, WE7U wrote:

>On Sat, 1 May 2004, Martin Ewing wrote:
>
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>>Hi.  I'm relatively new to the ham/linux game myself, but I have a
>>pretty long experience with hamming and Linux separately.
>>
>>The general state of Linux stuff for ham radio is primitive, IMO.
>>    
>>
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>>It takes a pretty farsighted
>>developer to put in lots of time to make advanced (user friendly, device
>>independent, multi-mode) software for Linux when nearly all the
>>potential users are on Windows.  So, we have MixW, MultiPSK, etc. for
>>Windows and nothing similar AFAIK in Linux.
>>
>>I wish it were otherwise, and I'm doing my small part.
>>    
>>
>
>I take very slight offense to your comments.  ;-)
>
>Have you seen Xastir, which is one of the premier APRS apps, which
>runs on multiple OS'es?  Yea, we run on Windows now too, but only
>through the Cygwin emulator, so it is really still a Unix app under
>the hood.
>
>    http://www.xastir.org
>
>You can compare it to the other APRS apps here:
>
>    http://www.eskimo.com/~archer/aprs_capabilities.html
>
>--
>Curt, WE7U			    archer at eskimo dot com
>Arlington, WA, USA		http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
>"Lotto:    A tax on people who are bad at math." -- unknown
>"Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates." -- WE7U
>"The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"
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