LHS Episode #106: The Aussie Contingent

australia-map-flagGreetings, listeners! May we entice you with another episode of Linux in the Ham Shack? We sure hope so. In this installment, we have a special guest, Peter64, ubiquitous podcaster of Kernel Panic Oggcast fame. He gives us a decidedly downunda perspective on our topics for the evening. Speaking of topics, we have several: new releases, including Debian "Wheezy" and KDE, updates on previous topics including the Tucnak logging application and the Hamux live distro, based on CentOS. Finally, we take a look at a clever and addictive airplane tracker that uses FAA and ADS-B transponders to let you know where your loved ones are when they're at 35,000 feet. G'day from the team. We'll keep a shrimp on the barbie for ya.

73 de The LHS Guys

Show Notes #099

Introduction:

  • Apologies for the tardiness of the show notes for Episode 99. I spent a few days in warmer climes, neglecting my duties. -Bill, KA9WKA
  • Welcome to episode 99 of Linux in the Ham Shack.

Announcements:

  • Linuxfest Northwest has announced their Call for Papers, Sponsors and Exhibitors. The show will be at Bellingham Technical College in Bellingham, Washington on April 27th and 28th, 2013. Visit their website for more information.
  • Donations for LHS to be at the 2013 Dayton Hamvention are already rolling in. Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far. Please send anything you can. Even a dollar helps out. Donate here!
  • The Wouff-Hong Podcast has been announced. It will star Tracy Holz, N5UNX and Joel McLaughlin, W3RAZ. Joel is also a co-host of the long-running Linux Link Tech Show podcast. Tracy has been a guest on many podcasts and also did his own show, Working in the Open, a couple of years ago. The show will be ham radio focused, with topics ranging from operating practice to folklore to hardware. Tracy is currently co-hosting The Techie Geek podcast with Russ Wenner.
  • Things to do:
    • Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
    • Become a subscriber for $2/month or $20/year. That donation does count towards the Dayton Hamvention fund.
    • Record a little memento for the 100th episode. Tell us you like us, or hate us, or whatever. Just let us hear from you. Leave your voice message at +1-909-547-7469. (By the time these notes are published, the 100th episode has already been recorded. However, feel free to leave a message, anyway!)
    • Check out the Events and Ambassadors pages on the LHS site. If you can help us out by being at an event for us, please let us know. We provide the booth setup and a free T-shirt or ball cap. You provide a presence and a demo computer. Everyone has a good time.
    • Join the LHS IRC channel. We are at #lhspodcast on Freenode (irc.freenode.net), and there's almost always someone to chat with. Plus you can participate in the live show that way.
    • Listen to the live show every other Tuesday night at 8:00pm Central. You get to hear all the stuff we cut out of the podcast release. Plus, if you're in the IRC, your experience is twice as fun. The URL to listen is https://stream.blacksparrowmedia.net:8008/lhslive.
    • Join the Linux in the Ham Shack Google+ Community.
    • Follow LHS on Google+, Identi.ca and Facebook. Also, follow BSM_Network and LHSPodcast on Twitter.

Topics:

  • FreeDV is a GUI application for Windows and Linux (MacOS and BSD are in testing) that allows any SSB radio to be used for low bit rate digital voice. It appears to be using Codec 2!
  • Hamux 6 is a CentOS-based repository with ham radio software. It is compatible with the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) project. It works with CentOS 5 and 6, and i386 and x86_64 versions are now available. It's not a distro, but repackaged RPMs for RHEL and CentOS. It does require EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux).
  • Fedora 18 has finally been released, and Russ shares his experience with this much anticipated, and often delayed, release. Russ provides a brief and not very favorable, review.
  • Richard suggests trying SliTaz GNU/Linux.

Feedback:

  • Leif, KC8RWR (in reference to our discussion of using short wave radio for Internet connectivity in Episode 98), offers his thoughts.
  • Dave, M0DCM, also chimes in with some comments about high-speed Internet over HF.

Contact Info:

  • Contact Richard at kb5jbv@gmail.com, Russ at k5tux@lhspodcast.info, or both at the same time at info@lhspodcast.info.
  • Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
  • Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
  • Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
  • Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
  • LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
  • Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

  • "Drinkin' Problem" by Freeky Clean & Dickey F from the album South of Pearly Gates, courtesy of Jamendo.
  • "Writing on the Wall" by Freeky Clean & Dickey F from the album Double Feature, courtesy of Jamendo.

Show Notes #080

Introduction:

  • Tornado season has begun in Texas! Check out the videos at kcares.info

Announcements:

  • The donations for the LHS to Dayton Hamvention fund have stalled. If you'd like to see LHS return to the Hamvention this year, please make a donation in the next week or two. All donations will go toward the cost of the booth in the vendor exhibition hall. If we fail to raise enough to attend, then the funds will go toward the expenses of producing LHS.

Topics:

  • Richard's Linux Adventures
    • Thank You Kubuntu, for once again obliterating Richard's boot sectors.
    • Russ suggests using dd to perform what is essentially a low-level format of the drive. For example,
      dd bs=1m if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda

      NOTE: This will totally erase your hard drive! Use caution!

    • Matthew, KC8BEW, in the chat room, suggests using Spinrite to repair a hard drive.
    • Richard declares that Debian is the Jesus Christ of Linux distributions, as it raised his hard drive from the dead, at least temporarily. It was the only distro he found that managed to install grub on the drive.
    • Richard also declares that Linux Mint sucks... at least for him. Audacity caused 100% CPU usage, spell check didn't work, and it crashes.
    • Also discussed: CentOS, Scientific Linux, Fedora, PCLinuxOS, Xubuntu, lubuntu.
  • Richard is writing an ebook on the National Traffic System.
  • Russ again suggests Richard try Debian, but Richard says it won't let him install Firefox. Maybe there's a hardware issue? (Perhaps memtest might find a memory error? -Ed.)

Donations:

  • We received several donations from visitors to the Dalton Hamfest and the KARC Hamfest. Thank you to our ambassador Ronny (K4RJJ) and to everyone who stopped by our booth at those events.
  • Russ hoped to interview Roy, KK4ATD, our ambassador to the RARSfest last week. Apparently, the LHS booth was a great success.
  • If you'd like to be an ambassador for LHS at an event, email us at ambassadors@lhspodcast.info and visit the Ambassadors link on the web site.

Feedback:

  • Fab, co-host of Linux Outlaws, left a couple comments on the website expressing his gratitude for being on the show.
  • Bob (W9YA) offers Russ some suggestions for entering the contact exchange information in YFKtest.
  • LinuxCanuck left a comment saying he enjoyed the episode with Fab, asks for help getting the feed links on the web site to work, and offers some thoughts about Kubuntu.
  • Roy, KK4ATD, the LHS ambassador to RARSFest, calls in to the show and describes the event. He's also building a repository of ham radio packages for CentOS, called Hamux.

Contact Info:

  • Contact Richard at kb5jbv@gmail.com, Russ at k5tux@lhspodcast.info, or both at the same time at info@lhspodcast.info.
  • Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
  • Leave us a voice mail at 1-909-LHS-SHOW (1-909-547-7469), or record an introduction to the podcast.
  • Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
  • Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
  • LHS merchandise is available at the Merch link on Web site. Check out the Badgerwear or buy one of the other LHS-branded items at PrintFection.com/lhs or Cafe Press. Thanks!
  • Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

LHS Episode #080: Fitch Best

Ever had something you wanted to get off your chest? Richard did on this episode of Linux in the Ham Shack. Somewhere along the line, Russ got sucked in as well and suddenly it was all about stuff the hosts didn't like. There's plenty of comic relief in the middle, though, and there is a happy ending when one of the show's ambassadors calls in to talk about his adventure at a recent hamfest. All in all, a fun ride down Birch Street--uh, you know what we mean.

73 de The LHS Guys