linrad (was: Self Introduction: Iain R. Learmonth)

[John C. Peterson]

On Mon Apr 6 15:30:05 EDT 2015, Leif Asbrink, leif at sm5bsz.com wrote;
> Dear Iain, if you find the Linrad project interesting and if you
> or someone you know is interested in helping to make it fit to
> become a Fedora (or Debian or whatever) package, please have
> a look at the repo and tell me what would have to be done.
> 

I have built Linrad several times and don't recall having any trouble.
I don't think there is anything to worry about there.

The first step in Fedora packaging is to check all the licensing
issues. Iain has already done the important leg work of verifying that
the license (MIT) is acceptable to Fedora, so that's an important hurdle
that's been cleared.

I can appreciate the time you spent getting Linrad to run fast. I
have an inexpensive dual core Celeron laptop and it runs Linrad
comfortably, at only about 50% loading. That's with one of the
inexpensive Realtek rtl2832u DVB dongles, running at the maximum of
2.5 MSPS. (Had that running the weekend of the recent ARRL contest,
and the waterfall on 10m was quite a sight).

I don't think it would deter your changes of a Linrad package getting 
approved, but I did notice one thing that could use a little polish. Unix
(and Linux) users often have an expectation that parameter files are
always installed in a standard location (rather than the CWD).

You could leave things as they are on Windows and Macintosh, but under
Linux have your *.par parameter files be located in the $HOME/.linrad/
directory. You could always check an appropriately named environment
variable to accomodate the user that wants it somewhere else. (Maybe
even allow sub-directories of $HOME/.linrad/ that contain *.par files
for different radios).

Anyhow, thanks Leif for all your work on Linrad, it's a great program.

-- 
John C. Peterson, KD6EKQ
mailto:jcp at eskimo.com
San Diego, CA U.S.A