Not counting my wife’s and son’s computers, I have ten different Linux systems around the house, two Mac laptops, and two Windows laptop. The only reason I’m even running Windows – one is for work, and the other is a shipping computer for my wife’s business where the label printer doesn’t work. I haven’t been since Win2k and avoid it whenever possible.
That balance is being shifted a bit as I write this. My Ham Radio Linux system (“hambox”) was just reformatted, and I’m installing Windows 10 on it.
I had just gotten Linux working on hambox with my IC-7100 and IC-7300. It wasn’t perfect however. The main apps I was using, Vara and VarAC, were difficult to set up and didn’t quite work perfectly with the hardware. It wasn’t stable, and other apps like WFView just didn’t work at all. Unfortunately, in the Ham world, Windows is king.
WFView is actually what put me over the edge. I want the waterfall view, and kind of central rig control (hopefully). In addition, when I set up the Custom Linux Remote Display Resolution in NoMachine, it killed the sound that was being forwarded to my NoMachine clients. It’s not a huge deal when working modes like VarAC or JS8Call, but I’d like to be able to actually listen to voice once in a while.
There’s really nothing that I need Linux for, other than the operating system’s native X.25 support. So I decided to use my Raspberry Pi that runs DigiPi with my IC-7100 exclusively, and any traditional packet (2m and HF) I can do there. Then the separate Windows hambox can run everything else – WFView, Vara, VarAC, FT8, JS8Call, codeplug software…
Knowing me I’ll get it all set up, find one problem, and decide to switch back to Linux within a week. We’ll see.
Edit: It’s complete and everything seems to be working well. I ended up using FLRig for VARA since band changes were changing the filter to filter 2 for no good reason (it was mentioned on a few forum posts but no clear fix).
Installed and working so far:
- WFView
- Vara
- VarAC
- FLRig
- FLDigi
- JS8Call
Todo:
- Double-check that remote sound works via NoMachine
- WSJTX
- Some logging software (this I’d rather put up a centralized service somewhere else on my network, like on Proxmox, if possible).
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