Linux, hmmm, you watch the fan bois come out in force to defend their god over this post. But linux is like a case of the drizzling shits, and endless stream of watery faeces that stick to everything, stink to high heaven and will eventually kill you.
I am not a neanderthal, or and Luddite, I have been using unix and linux on and off for just about forever. But i am at a point in life where I do not want to screw around with things. I want my tools to not require me to fight them to get any work done. When i grab a hammer i do not get out a saw and an plane and some sandpaper to make a fucking hammer, It needs to be ready just to hit shit.
So if its not working out of the box, if i have to fight it, diagnose 100 problems just to get a system that does everything i need, then I do not want to use it. This is the story so far. Oh I should mention, I am writing this post in linux, I have everything just about sorted out other than 1 piece of software that I do not really want to change because I like how it works and it does everything that i need. More on that later.
So i started out with Mint, I used to use mint as my daily driver when I was coding for online games. Back when I had simpler needs and all i really needed was a programming IDE, browser and email to be happy. It was what I went to initially, i know my way around it, it looks good and its what I have installed on the wifes computer. But for whatever reason, it would lock up every couple of days on my computer. No idea why, just random lockups. So it was out.
Next was Manjaro, Oh i liked this distro, its look and feel was good, it was responsive and fast, but it had a bug with fonts-config and I had no idea how to fix it and could not find any explanation on how to either. Its a shame really, but if I cannot run certain software on a distro, then its out nano vna saver is important here, i am a home brewer after all.
Then i gave MX a try, this might have actually been an ok distro, but out of the box the package manager was using an out of date repository and by the time i worked out what was happening, the install was fucked up. Wine would not install wine32, kind of needed for the older 32bit windows software that there are no linux version of, and something as simple as installing Kdenlive in a KDE desktop borked because of broken dependencies. Its shit like that, which really turn people off. I did not bother reinstalling and trying again after than. It was dead to me.
So i thought i would go old school with Opensuse, it had the KDE missing icons bug, not hard to fix, but in a modern bleeding edge distro you would think that they would fix it so that it uses the non broken theme and icons. But the thing that killed this for me, I could not get it to work with my wifi printer. Most others discover the printer add the cups driver and bang its working. Nope, it could not even discover it.
And now we have gone back full circle. I am running Kubuntu, yeah canonicle are something I like to avoid, but here we are, everything is running and all i have left now that I do not have a suitable replacement for is Ham Radio Deluxe. Not that I am doing a whole lot of operating at the moment, one antenna is down, the other one is putting RF in the shack and I have not been bothered to fix either of them as Im probably moving within the next few months and need to take it all down. So for that, i will dual boot with windows just for logging and for using DM870 for digital modes.
Yeah i know about fldigi and the suit of software that goes along with it, but its like looking at the 1850’s, if they made the thing look sleek and modern it might be a suitable alternative, but as it looks now, yeah i just cannot bring myself to use it. That, and when i tried it in windows it never worked for me, even with the sound settings flat out it never had enough gain and the rig control was meh as well. Never did work out what its problem was, HRD worked and never gave me a problem, so i just ponied up and bought it.
Anyway, that is my story, Linux is pain in the arse and a piece of shit that is still not ready for the main game, but, i think i will be able to make things work for now. All this because windows broke the bloody MTP driver for my phone and tablet. And if you are a linux fan boi and I have touched you on the frequency because I spoke ill of your god, don’t bother commenting, you are not going to change my mind that linux is turds on fire. If its perfect for you, that is great. Not everyone is you.
I use Windows primarily for Ham Radio uses. This is mainly because my main s/w is Windows only (SDR Console, SDR Uno, PowerSDR). For everything else, I use Linux. It’s what I am corfortable with, and I appreciate not having to wrestle with USB drivers for certain devices liek HackRF and LimeSDR.
As you said, horses for courses.
Yeah Gerry, there is no real solution for SDRplay on linux. The linux software is old and not maintained and kind of rubbish. Plus the guys I know who have used them on linux tell me that the drivers tend to crash a lot also. I will be dual booting with windows for quite sometime because of that also. It is what it is hey. To think, i used to enjoy computers and tinkering with them and forcing them to do what I want. Now I am a black box operator who just wants shit to work. HAHAHAHA