What computers do I use for radio?
Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2023 4:26 pm
Mostly a HP Envy (i5, Nvidia), about 5 years old, running Win 11, Linux Mint 21.1, LMDE 5 (Elsie), Ubuntu (Jammy), Arch Linux, I run a core group of favorite apps on all these distros, less Win 11. The group consists of CQRLOG, Fldigi, WSJT-X, JS8Call, QSSTV. Not into Winlink / Packet yet, but hopefully soon.
Then there's a new notebook, an ASUS Zephyrus to explore possibilities of a Ryzen-9 and Radeon graphics in a 16GB RAM environment. So far, fun but not all plain sailing. More on this later.
Raspberry Pis mostly B variants and one Zero used as a D-Star hotspot, running mostly Raspbian. (RasPis also used for home security.)
So having steered folks toward "Linux Mint" in a previous post, and yes I still stand by that, what do I use myself? Linux Mint, by any chance?
Yes, I'm using Mint 21.1 right now to post and administer The Hambone. It's easy, reliable and an old friend.
But what "distro" do I enjoy most? Arch Linux in it's various flavors. It is blistering fast and generally reliable, with an huge selection of software. The catch is that the speed comes mostly from installing each app from source code and compiling it to executable binary code on the machine that will run the app. The result is tailor-made apps for each particular computer, but you do need to be comfortable running a code compiler to make this work. That's a big enough reason to recommend Arch to only those who are already familiar with the basic workings of a Linux system. Arch for ever? Probably no, as the world never stands still. I've been with Slackware and Gentoo in the past, as well as a minor dabble in BSD.
Who knows what comes next? That's the fun of it isn't it?
Then there's a new notebook, an ASUS Zephyrus to explore possibilities of a Ryzen-9 and Radeon graphics in a 16GB RAM environment. So far, fun but not all plain sailing. More on this later.
Raspberry Pis mostly B variants and one Zero used as a D-Star hotspot, running mostly Raspbian. (RasPis also used for home security.)
So having steered folks toward "Linux Mint" in a previous post, and yes I still stand by that, what do I use myself? Linux Mint, by any chance?
Yes, I'm using Mint 21.1 right now to post and administer The Hambone. It's easy, reliable and an old friend.
But what "distro" do I enjoy most? Arch Linux in it's various flavors. It is blistering fast and generally reliable, with an huge selection of software. The catch is that the speed comes mostly from installing each app from source code and compiling it to executable binary code on the machine that will run the app. The result is tailor-made apps for each particular computer, but you do need to be comfortable running a code compiler to make this work. That's a big enough reason to recommend Arch to only those who are already familiar with the basic workings of a Linux system. Arch for ever? Probably no, as the world never stands still. I've been with Slackware and Gentoo in the past, as well as a minor dabble in BSD.
Who knows what comes next? That's the fun of it isn't it?