[Ham-Linux] Which Distro/Apps/Apps development software to use?

[Stephen Farthing]

Hi Guys.

 

I have just finished putting together a computer for the shack. It is a dual
core AMD something or other with 1Gbyte of RAM and 250 GByte ofSata HDD. I
also have a soundblaster USB external sound "card" I want to use as well.
The mother board has onboard everything else I think I need, and until the
Gods of freecycle smile on me I'll be using an old SVSG CRT Old School
monitor.  Also it has many, many USB ports and one serial port. 

 

I am keen to work towards a "Linux only" shack system because I feel that
Linux is more in keeping with the spirit of ham Radio than Windows which I
have to use professionally as well as an OS/X Mac. I am reasonably computer
proficient and can work my way around shell scripts and C Programs as well
as COBOL and a load of other old skool languages. (and no I don't want a
punch card reader either!). I am also learning my way around Ruby and Joomla
for what it's worth and C# under Vista. 

 

The sorts of things I want to do are :-

 

Rig control - FT817, TS 570, Elecraft K2

Digital and weak signal modes - WSPR, PSK, QRSS, Morse. RTTY

SDR - I have a Softrock 9. Is there a linux equivalent of Power SDR?

Test equipment  - Probably be building a VNA to Toms design in QEX, use of
the sound card as an AF generator and component tester, 

AVR programming (probably using the Adruino board and Wiring which I believe
runs under Linux

Spice circuit simulation

Development of bespoke applications to run under, I guess, Gnome and/or KDE
in a high level language (e.g. C, Ruby) 

Small scale web site development to document the above and act as a "Lab
Notebook"

Logging

Connect to the internet via wifi

Anything else you guys can come up with.. 

 

So the questions are :-

 

What distro should I use?

What applications should I use?

Is there a decent Applications Development environment that I can use to
develop GUI applications in either C or Ruby (or something similar, but
please, please, not assembler as I am not clever enough)

 

Sorry about the bandwidth - but I am sure someone out has figured it all out
before hand.

 

72 de Steve G0XAR

 

 

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