Best linux to use with radio related soft ware.

[KB5ZXM]

I finally found the new topic button, had to reduce my screen size,
Any way I want to make up a spare Hard drive for my Dell Latitude lap top, with some sort of Linux, and a GUI to go with it.
I will want to use it with TeleNet, WinLink, and soft ware from ICOM that programs radio freq info, and one that can control the radio <Icom 706 >
In the past I have bought Ubuntu on CD and others , and never was able to make it run on any thing.
thanks, in advance for any help KB5ZXM

[KG4TKC]

Hi KB5ZXM,good luck with Linux,I use it and really enjoy using Linux instead of Micro$hift WindOze. This site,  http://radio.linux.org.au/?sectpat=All&ordpat=title  has a lot of the ham radio software available for Linux. Ubuntu is supposed to be a good choice of Linux to start off with. I use Debian and like it quite a bit. Choosing a Linux distro is like going to an ice cream parlor,lots of decisions,,:) The newer distros are mostly GUI,but you sometimes still need to break out terminal window.

There is a live CD with Knoppix and ham radio programs that you can download and burn and run from your CD. It is on the radio.linux site above.

There are a lot of support sites,IRQ channels,and forums for Linux,you just have to Google to search them out. Good luck with your Linux experiment!

[AC5UP]

http://www.mepis.org/

Loads fast & easy, nice setup straight off the first boot, kernel is Debian based which makes it stable and hardware friendly.

[KB5ZXM]

thanks to all de kb5zxm, here I go >>

[WA7NCL]

www.distrowatch.com.  Over on the left is the linux hit parade.  Start at the top most popular and work your way down.  All are downloadable for free.

Unfortunately you did not specify the windows software you want to run on your linux distro.  I assume some of the Icom control stuff you refer to is written for windows.

While you can use the WINE emulator to run a lot of well behaved windows software, it does not in general support windows programs that use windows hardware drivers very well.  You might get it to run stuff that uses the serial port but USB is so far not supported.

If you have an old copy of win95 or win98 or even win2k, you can make a virtual machine install of windows using virtualbox.  That emulated environment will run windows programs 100% including serial, USB and disk and CDROM accesses.  You can keep all the nasty windows viruses etc in a virtual pen and enjoy linux for the wrapper.