Amateur Radio Software
Distributed with (X)Ubuntu LTS

Serge Stroobandt, ON4AA

Copyright 2014–2018, licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

0. Home
1. Linux Ham
2. (X)Ubuntu LTS

Introduction

Amateur radio (also called “ham radio”), is a technical hobby Many ham radio stations are highly integrated with computers. Radios are interfaced with computers to aid with contact logging, propagation prediction, station spotting, antenna steering, signal (de)modulation and filtering.

For many years, amateur radio software has been a bastion of Windows™ applications developed by However, with the advent of the Rasperry Pi, amateur radio hobbyists are slowly but surely discovering GNU/Linux.

Most of the software for GNU/Linux is available through package repositories. Such package repositories come by default with the GNU/Linux distribution of your choice. Package management systems offer many benefits in the form of security (you know what you are getting from whom) and ease-of-use (packages are upgraded automatically). No longer does one need to wander the back corners of the internet to find new or updated software, exposing oneself to the risk of catching a computer virus.

A number of GNU/Linux distributions offer freely installable ham-related packages under the “Amateur Radio” section of their main repository. The largest collection of ham radio packages is offered by OpenSuse and Debian-derived distributions like Xubuntu LTS and Linux Mint, to name but a few. Arch Linux may also have whole bunch of ham related software in the Arch User Repository (AUR).

Synaptic

One way to find and install ham radio packages on Debian-derived distros is by using the Synaptic graphical package manager (see Figure 1). However, searching the vast Synaptic package database may become rapidly overwhelming at times. This is why for this article, another technique was employed; namely, shamelessly exploiting aptitude command-line arguments.

The Synaptic graphical package manager partially showing the “Amateur Radio” section of the Xubuntu LTS repository.

Hamradio

The entire default ham radio package list is printed below. Lazy as I am, the Markdown table was created from the command line and included by reference into the surprisingly short Markdown source of this page. Below command prints a Markdown pipe table with the package name and description of all packages belonging to the hamradio section of the native architecture. If you want to find out more about how this works, here are aptitude’s package list customisation escape codes and search patterns.

$ aptitude -F'%p' search '~r native ~s hamradio' \
      |xargs apt-cache show \
      |awk '/^Package/{name=$2} \
            /^Description-en/{$1="";sub(FS,"");description=$0} \
            /^Homepage/{url=$2} \
            /^$/{if(url) {printf("|["name"]("url")|"description"|\n"); url=""} \
                 else {printf("|"name"|"description"|\n")}}' \
      |sed -e '/.*-common/d' -e '/.*-core/d' \
           -e '/.*-data/d' -e '/.*-dev/d' -e '/.*-doc.*/d' \
           -e '/^|lib.*/d' -e '/^|\[lib.*/d' \
      |sort -u \
      > ../doc/hamradio.tmp

Electronics

But wait, there is more! … The vast array of electronics packages should not be overlooked.

$ ( aptitude -F'%p' search '~r native ~s electronics'
    aptitude -F'%p' search '~r native ~Rrecommends: science-electronics'
    aptitude -F'%p' search '~r native ~Rsuggests: science-electronics' ) \
      |xargs apt-cache show \
      |awk '/^Package/{name=$2} \
            /^Description-en/{$1="";sub(FS,"");description=$0} \
            /^Homepage/{url=$2} \
            /^$/{if(url) {printf("|["name"]("url")|"description"|\n"); url=""} \
                 else {printf("|"name"|"description"|\n")}}' \
      |sed -e '/.*-common/d' -e '/.*-core/d' \
           -e '/.*-data/d' -e '/.*-dev/d' -e '/.*-doc.*/d' \
           -e '/^|lib.*/d' -e '/^|\[lib.*/d' \
      |sort -u \
      > ../doc/electronics.tmp

Engineering

Every home-brewed ham project involves some amount of engineering…

$ ( aptitude -F'%p' search '~r native ~Rrecommends: science-engineering'
    aptitude -F'%p' search '~r native ~Rsuggests: science-engineering' ) \
      |xargs apt-cache show \
      |awk '/^Package/{name=$2} \
            /^Description-en/{$1="";sub(FS,"");description=$0} \
            /^Homepage/{url=$2} \
            /^$/{if(url) {printf("|["name"]("url")|"description"|\n"); url=""} \
                 else {printf("|"name"|"description"|\n")}}' \
      |sed -e '/.*-common/d' -e '/.*-core/d' \
           -e '/.*-data/d' -e '/.*-dev/d' -e '/.*-doc.*/d' \
           -e '/^|lib.*/d' -e '/^|\[lib.*/d' \
      |sort -u \
      > ../doc/engineering.tmp

Science

In the section universe/science, there are more packages of interest to the amateur radio operator. The reason why these packages did not show up before is in part due to poor package classification.

$ aptitude -F'%p' search '~r native ~s universe/science' \
      |grep -e astronomical-almanac -e aweather -e fcd- -e openuniverse -e savi -e seti -e stellarium -e wfrog -e xtide \
      |xargs apt-cache show \
      |awk '/^Package/{name=$2} \
            /^Description-en/{$1="";sub(FS,"");description=$0} \
            /^Homepage/{url=$2} \
            /^$/{if(url) {printf("|["name"]("url")|"description"|\n"); url=""} \
                 else {printf("|"name"|"description"|\n")}}' \
      |sed -e '/.*-common/d' -e '/.*-core/d' \
           -e '/.*-data/d' -e '/.*-dev/d' -e '/.*-doc.*/d' \
           -e '/^|lib.*/d' -e '/^|\[lib.*/d' \
      |sort -u \
      > ../doc/science.tmp

Even more

Check out Hamsoft, for even more ham software which perhaps is not distributed with (X)Ubuntu. Also, —if your really need to— much Windows™-only software will run flawlessly on GNU/Linux by using tools such as PlayOnLinux. In another article, you can read about my experience running closed source ham radio software on GNU/Linux.

Telnet into a DX-Cluster

Here is another little trick if you like to connect to a DX-cluster with telnet in the command line. Preceed the telnet command with a rlwrap command. Doing so, will provide command history via the up ↑ and down ↓ arrows, which is quite handy.

$ rlwrap telnet nolcluster.on8ar.eu 7300

Obviously, (X)Ubuntu also has DX-cluster clients with a graphical user interface (GUI) and computer aided tuning (CAT) on offer. One such program is xdx and comes with the standard repository.

5

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Last update: Wednesday, September 1, 2021.