Upgraded my Linux Mint laptop to 22.2 "Zara"

 I finally upgraded my Linux Mint laptop,  I keep reminding myself to do it, but never get around to it. It has been on 21.3 for quite some time, I doing the patches regularly, but stopping to upgrade is another thing. I upgraded in the recommended steps, 21.3 to 22.0, 22.0 to 22.1, then 22.1 to 22.2 "Zara", each step proceeded with its snapshot for safety. All went well, no side effects or issues detected. The Linux Mint 22.2 built on Ubuntu 24.4 LTS. It works great, nice and fast on my old ASUS N550JK laptop.
This is a great time to remind those about to throw away their old laptop or PC because of Windows 10 now being unsupported, (as of 14th October) that you can recycle those old PC's and laptops giving them another lease on  life by installing a flavour of Linux O/S replacing the old Windows 10.
You have nothing to lose,  Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint to name but a few for you to try. I use mine mainly for browsing, WSJTX and Arduino IDE.

ARDC interview of Bdale Garbee (KB0G)

 I was looking up something on QRZ.COM, amongst the ads on the main page, I spotted a photo, I thought I recognise that person, it was Bdale Garbee, (man of a thousand tiedie T-sheets)  it  was ad for a interview on Youtube. The same man who created Bdale's Messy Mailer,  I would hate to think how many years I used the BM mailer program in NOS. 
Bdale was involved in TAPR AX25 and later Linux, (in particular Debian) amongst many other projects.

Inside ARDC: Bdale KB0G on Funding the Future of Ham Radio | QRZ Forums

Pi-Star MMDVM Upgrades

 I just poking around doing some TalkGroup config changes today on my DMR Pi-Star MMDVM node that I use for VK DMR network, I was prompted with an upgrade notice, so I proceeded to upgrade that DMR node and I also upgraded my P25 Pi-Star Node while I was a it.

I been running version 4.1.6 for probably 2 years now since it  was release in November 2021

I noticed during upgrade it did two steps, upgrade to 4.1.7, then onto 4.1.8

I then thought it be good idea to check the Release Notes to see what it is about, 

here is extract off the Pi-Star website, no new functionality, its underlying infrastructure changes, required to allow for new functionality to be added in future, such as M17 Support. I still hanging out for some P25 Gateway functionality. (fingers crossed)

Pi-Star Downloads - pistar.uk

current Release Notes, as of 19th April, 2024

16-Feb-2024 **Version 4.2.1** - Available for Download or Upgrade.
    This version addresses some issues with the nextiondriver.service
        unit file, and with NextionDriver in general. I had
        not actually intended to include the unit file with
        4.2.0, but it's there, so to clean that up, we need
        a minor upgrade.
    While working on NextionDriver, I also noticed an issue with
        4.2.0 not always syncing the time correctly.
        This update also addresses NTP issues in the 4.2.0
        build.
    Additional disk cleaning is done in the release image,
        reducing the image size slightly.

05-Feb-2024 **Version 4.2.0** - Available for Download.
    This release upgrades the base OS from Buster to Bullseye.
        Binaries / Dashboard are all the same as 4.1.x chain.
        There will be some of you that need (for some reason)
        to use the older binary set, if that happens to be
        the case, check out this post on the forum:
        https://forum.pistar.uk/viewtopic.php?t=4806
    On the NanoPi / OrangePi and Odroid releases, the kernels
        are now updated as part of normal OS updates.
    Along with the "Legacy" branch should you need them, there
        is also now a "Testing" that is going to keep pace
        with the upstream releases, so now any of you can
        take part in the testing of new packages.
    If you have a 4.2.0 Beta image installed, you can keep using
        it so long as it's working OK for you, the last bug
        that has been crushed relates to Wi-Fi on the
        Raspberry Pi Zero 2W, it would drop the Wi-Fi after
        a few hours, if you are seeing that, re-flash with the
        current release.

21-Jan-2024 **Version 4.1.8** - Available for Download.
    This it is not possible to in-place upgrade and get the changes
        that matter in this download, the /boot volume has
        been 64MB in size for many years, and before there
        were too many versions of Raspberry Pi boards, this
        was fine. The ever growing number of kernels and
        systems supported by Raspbian means that 64MB is just
        not large enough any more.
    This change to the size of /boot (up to 256MB) also requires
        that I lift the minimum uSD card size to 4GB (it has
        been 2G since Pi-Star launched 10 years ago). This is
        the start of a lot of work to take Pi-Star past some
        of the baked in decisions from years ago that have made
        upgrades painful.
    If you have a working system, upgrade to 4.1.8, but don't rush
        to re-image, 4.2.0 is on the horizon, bumping the OS
        to bullseye, and paving the way for what comes next.
    Those of you waiting for bookworm, well you need to wait just
        a little bit longer, we need a stable release on
        bullseye out, before we get too radical.
    New binaries are coming soon, I wanted to get some of the long
        standing issues cured before pushing those, I will
        re-spin the images once they land.

18-Jan-2024 **Version 4.1.8** - Available for Upgrade.
    Bringing in M17 components, it's not configurable on the dash
        yet, but that is coming soon. First bring in the parts
        to make the service work, and pull in audio files etc.
    More work is required, but the basics of the dash changes are
        done, still to-do update config page and the repeater
        info panel. Thos should get pulled in over the next
        few days.

05-Jan-2024 **Version 4.1.7** - Available for download and upgrade.
    It has been a while since I pushed a full update. Mostly that
        has been owing the to the very stable nature of the
        current build, however, it was getting to have some
        issues creep in.
    What is new? - Actually nothing new, this update us just fixing
        the expired keys for the apt repos. This caused the OS
        and other packages not to get some updates.
        Upgrade to 4.1.7 from the dashboard (it's faster) and
        the new keys get installed, allowing all of the update
        goodness to function once more.
    I know this is not terribly exciting, but there are other things
        being worked on that are more exciting, more news on that
        later.

NOTE: as I mentioned back in October, 2022, to run P25 mode, you have to use the old Kernel 4.19.97+  as the P25 Mode doesn't like the later 5.10.11+ kernel.
To use the later versions of DMR (ie. 4.1.6 and later) you need to use a later version kernel, 5.10.11+ or later, otherwise it starts up and looks fine, but will not connect to a Master, e.g. DMR+.

Direwolf APRS/Packet radio software "soundcard" application - v1.7 released October, 2023

 Releases · wb2osz/direwolf (github.com)

available for Windows, Linux, MacOS

For me I am interested in it for APRS usage applications.

upgrading Linux Mint 20.3 to 21.2

 I  recently upgraded  my ASUS N550J laptop 's Linux Mint from 20.3 to 21.2, this was done in two steps, as I was getting regular pokes from the upgrade manager to upgrade to 21.0, so I eventually got around to reading the online Upgrade Release Notes, simply following the steps precisely got me upgraded to 21.0 in very short time, then a day or so later, I was prompted to upgrade to 21.2, again simply following the instructions to complete the 21.2 update. I consider the task of upgrading Linux Mint a much easier task than that of upgrading MS Windows  from 10 to 11. Note that Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu Linux, which in turn is built of Debian Linux.

Home - Linux Mint

latest Linux flavours as of February 2020

I was just checking up  on the latest non-commercial flavours and spins of Linux going around, predominantly w.r.t. 32 bit versions that may still be available, considering Ubuntu, Centos, Fedora, RedHat have long dropped their 32bit versions and that I still like to run Linux on my old Dell Xeon based servers.

so as of February 2020 this is what I found :

Peppermint  Linux version10,  LXDE desktop, based on Lubuntu, Community oriented, 32 and 64bit

Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS  this was the last 32bit version.  18.04.3 LTS and 19.10 only in 64bit.
flavours Kubuntu with KDE desktop, Lubuntu with LXDE desktop, Ubuntu with MATE desktop, Xubuntu with Xfce desktop.

Debian 10.2  -  choice of GNOME, KDE, LXDE, Xfce, Cinnamon and MATE desktops, 32 and 64bit  and of course, Debian is very community oriented.

Linux Mint - has two streams:
 - LMDE3 based on Debian Stretch 9.11
 - Mint 19.3 based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS  with choice of Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce desktops
both offering 32 and 64bit, but not expecting any further 32bit releases of this Mint stream.

MX Linux version 19.1 based on Debian  with Xfce 4.14 desktop.  32 and 64bit. and is community oriented.

What caught my eye here was that there still some 32bit streams being produced, they will eventually dry up, but I can still experiment with latest Linux versions on old 32bit servers whilst they still work.
The second thing was the Cinnamon and MATE desktop offerings, as I have not tried these desktops before, so keen to try them out. The MX Linux I had not heard of before, but talking to my work colleague he seemed pretty keen on the MX Linux, he looking at it from a Developer perspective.

Comparison_of_Linux_distributions

ADDENDUM:
since writing the above, I  had a further look into the desktops, in particular Cinnamon and MATE, so basically these are forked development streams off GNOME2,  as GNOME3 was a major departure in that desktop environment in term of looks and behaviour.   Just think of Cinnamon and MATE desktops as spinoffs of GNOME2.  IMHO I preferred GNOME2 over GNOME3, because I not looking for flash presentation in a O/S, its about running applications and speed of doing work and  the ability of the O/S to integrate between the applications easily and how fast you can do it.  Think of it comparing Windows XP with Windows10,  you could strip down Win XP and make it fast.

George Smart M1GEO's Blog

Often I looking for some info on a amateur radio project I interested in, I do some searching on the web, one site I usually end up on and finding some good info is George Smart's (M1GEO) blog. He trying all sorts of stuff with the hobby (and general electronics too) and find his posts well documented with what the particular subject is about and what he trying to achieve in it and what the results are. Always worth a look here. One such example was compiling up up WSJT for Linux, I found George's article most helpful and I was able to successfully compile WSJT on Linux myself following his instructions.

https://www.george-smart.co.uk/radio/

some instructions from Alan VK2ZIW for configuring serial port to be able to run FPP software to program the PRM80:


Notes on running PRM80 FPP programs on Linux
============================================
Fedora 23 x86_64 on ASRock QC5000 system (Low Power AMD Kabini)
with FTDI Serial USB dongle ID 0403:6001, it's TTL to the radio

Radio: PRM80L S E0
     PRM8025 - 9502 810 10869

Reason: Conversion to 6m with VK3SMB's eprom, subtracts 20MHz
from the eeprom stored channel frequency, 68MHz becomes 48MHz.

The FPP DOS program does horrible things with the USART so
run "dosbox" with a network serial port. Use "netcat" (nc)
to connect to the FTDI serial port.

Edit ~/.dosbox/dosbox-0.74.conf
Setup the DosBox serial port:

serial1=nullmodem port:5000 transparent:1 rxdelay:1

After your "MOUNT" command for C: add:
C:
cd prm80pmr
bin\prm80pmr

Save your "dosbox-0.74.conf" file.

Setup the serial port, "stty raw" - most important
as you don't want any control characters interpreted.
"clocal" to ignore Carrier Detect. 4800 baud, 8bit, no parity.

#============ shell script rundb ==================
sleep 2 < /dev/ttyUSB0 &
stty raw < /dev/ttyUSB0
stty 4800 clocal cs8 < /dev/ttyUSB0
sleep 1
dosbox &
sleep 2
 nc localhost 5000  < /dev/ttyUSB0 > /dev/ttyUSB0
#============== script end ==============

Linux updates and WSJT

I updated my Linux boxes, Debian 7.3 to 7.4, Fedora 18 to 20, Ubuntu 13.10 to 14.04 LTS and Centos in 6.5 final. 

Cant go to Centos 7 as they only releasing a 64bit version, will get a 64bit box when the 32 bit server dies. 

Wondering what new adventures lay ahead trying to get WSJT and WSPR compiled and running on these latest Linux releases ...... mmmmmm

I did download the latest offering of WSJT from John Nagotch, to suit Ubuntu 14.05 "Trusty",
WSJT 9.7 r3639,  John kindly compiles different versions of WSJT and WSJTX for various releases of Ubuntu, which makes for a quick download and install for those not in a position to compile WSJT/WSJTX for Ubuntu,  you can obtain them from  this URL       https://launchpad.net/~jnogatch/+ppa-packages

 It installed fine, runs fine, but the audio interfaces that were compiled into this binary dont work with my Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook,  so its back to downloading from berlios repository and try again to compile it myself, although, I will try the qmake-qt4 as this seemed to be the new path for doing a make, using the development suite from     http://qt-project.org/  as mentioned in the WSJT Development forum discussions.

WSPR & WSJT on Linux

after messing around for several weeks trying to get WSJT and WSPR compiled on various flavours of Linux, I finally discovered that most discussion forums and blogs on the subject missed an important dependancy, being python-dev.

Moving on,  I have now succesfully compiled WSPR 4.0 r3051 (svn3571) on Ubuntu 12.04 x86, Ubuntu 13.04 x86, Debian 6.02 (Gnome) x86,  Debian 7.1 (Gnome) x86  and Debian 7.1 (KDE) x86.   I have been running the two Debian 7.1 instances with WSPR 4.0 back to back to prove they can decode each other correctly, so that is looking good.  I have now have my confidence back in WSPR/WSJT on Linux again.

for the WSJT, successfully compiled  some old and latest version of WSJT on Ubuntu 13.04 x86, Debian 7.1 (Gnome) x86 and Debian (KDE) x86.   I was not expecting different behaviour from the Gnome based and KDE instances, but it did confirm consistency in the  build procedure, which is satisfying to know.
I downloaded and compiled WSJT 9.3 r2589  and WSJT 9.5 r3281 (svn 3564) for the Ubuntu 13.04 x86   and WSJT 9.5 r3281 (svn3571) on the two Debian 7.1 x86 instances.  I had picked the older versions based on what I had seen other people using, as a known stable release, once I confirmed it worked, then went and tried the latest version. That's using the source from the svn.berlios.de site.

Will do some more testing on the other combinations, followed by some RF testing. Then I will document my experiences on my web page to encourage more hams to switch to a Linux based WSPR / WSJT station.

And I also hope to do some 64 bit Linux compiles on a 64 bit server sometime.

What would be really nice to do in the future is get a Rasperry Pi board, get WSPR running on that, take it and a 2m radio portable up a mountain top.

WSPR on 144 MHz

a dissertation from Andrew VK3BQ on  using WSPR on 144 MHz

http://www.vk3bq.com/2013/07/15/idiots-guide-to-144mhz-wspr/

Android

speak of the devil, my new new HTC Aria arrived yesterday, much better browsing than my previous Nokia, I can now monitor vklogger.com when mobile. Functionality appears great. With time I can compare it against the likes of the iPhone4.

smartphones and apps

I was just reading Terry VK2KTJ's blog, apart from the discussions about podcasts for science, I noted Terry is using an Android based mobile device, note that I used the term 'mobile device'
instead of smartphone, as describing them as "phones" is a very loose terminology, as it is a really a micro notebook computer, usually with touch screen interface AND it has a phone as part of it functionality.

Anyway, I have been reading up on these 'mobile devices' since my daughter just HAD to go buy an Apple iPhone4, because that's what Gen-Y have to do !! Don't take me wrong, Apple make good stuff, but I like flexibility and being able to fiddle with things and it was my fellow work colleagues talking about which "smartphone" we need to use, that started me thinking, so I did some googling on the subject over the last 2 weeks and finding an abundance of good info on the subject of mobile devide operating systems, I now know Apple have iOS for iPhone and Nokia and some others use Symbian, HTC have both Windows 7 and Android based mobile devices. I myself have been using a Symbian based Nokia, which due to hardware reasons, is going to get replaced by something different, hopefully a HTC with Android.

Android is an open o/s based on Linux which is great, you can still have a fancy brick, but with a base o/s that allows some fiddling. I even see people doing some hacking to get iPhones to dual boot Android and iOS o/s's which is exciting stuff, that just instantly opens up your choice of apps that you may wish to run.
That's what I like about open systems like Linux and Android, it just pushes the big guys like Apple and Microsoft to innovate and to try and stay ahead on the ensuing pack.

I feel it will be an exciting period for these new mobile devices (smartphones) its already has me
thinking about apps that can assist my hobby, apart from the existing amateur radio apps such as echolink, dstar, aprs.

linux update

Attempted installs for Slackware, Gentoo and OpenSuse versions of Linux, the Gentoo I couldnt get past the basic search & load drivers, the Slackware installed ok, but failed when booting. The OpenSuse works well, a very nice gui based installer and equally good looking gui when running.
I installed the KDE 4.3 desktop with my OpenSuse. There was the option to install either Gnome or KDE. Nil amateur packages on OpenSuse, but still a good easy to install and use package, for those new to Linux and just wish to experiment.

Next, I wish to give Fedora 12 a test run, maybe Debian 5.04 too. I have been holding off upgrading my two Ubuntu boxes from 9.10 to 10.4, as I deciding whether to reallocate one of these boxes to another project.

In summary, for amateur radio related activities, still best to use either Debian/Ubuntu or Fedora bundles. For a ham that is new to Linux, probably Ubuntu is best choice, as it is just so easy to install and use.

EchoLink node 1494

The Ubuntu 9.04/LXDE/WineHQ build for my Echolink just was not cutting it,
the audio channel is still flakey, sometimes TX & RX audio is fine, sometime just one path is ok, sometimes no audio at all, so I have switched to a Win XP Pro machine yesterday to run the Echolink node and had it running in just a few minutes, but spent an hour just fine tuning the DTMF decoding. Maybe this relates to the audio interface of the PC and its driver.

As of last night it is back on air. I will see how it performs, as the last time I ran it on MS Windows, I kept finding it crashed & corrupted and having to reinstall the Echolink program several times over a 12 month period.

I also want to try installing the Echolink Proxy as I eventually want to run a second Echolink node, probably on 70cm. I also want to interface my Echolink with UIview32 for APRS, currently running APRS with Xastir on Linux at home.

EchoLink node 1494

well, I have been doing some more with this over the last few weeks, although time has been scarse, I have managed to install LXDE ontop of the standard Gnome based Ubuntu, and run Echolink (via WINEHQ) to prove that I have more resources on the Echolink Node PC using LXDE, so outgoing audio (from radio to IP side) is now being processed. This proves that Gnome is more resource hungry and not suitable on a dedicated server based applic like Echolink when implemented on older hardware. I definitely recommend Xfce or LXDE for your dedicated applics, but Gnome and KDE are still perfect replacements for a desktop 'workstation' replacement for a Wintel box.

However, having said that, running LXDE created a new problem, incoming Echolink (from IP side to radio) is now non-existant, but this is a soundcard output issues with LXDE which I will have a look at time permitting, so at this point in time, my Echlolink node is running, but not functioning. Realistically, running Echolink via WINEHQ on Linux is not really desirable, but a short gap solution.

Long term, I would like to do some work with 'The Bridge' and 'TheLinkBox' which are Linux based packages, available of SourceForge to provide a Echolink conference bridge (TheBridge) and a conference bridge/radio gateway (TheLinkBox), but looking at the documentation, these
are not simple click, install, run, as compared to the original Echolink package for Wintel, but anyway, it's still a work-in-progress project.

APRS update

now running Xastir APRS Client Node on Ubuntu 9.04 at home

now running UIView32 Node on W2K3 at work.

also did a test run of Xastir on Debian 5.0 at home, it works fine.
plus I did a test run of Xastir on Xubuntu 8.10, it works fine as well.

The TT3 is working well in the car, but noticed some dead spots along northern beaches not covered by VK2US-1 and VK2RAG-1. hopefully will get an iGate running at the clubsite to fill those missing spots along the beaches.