[amsat-bb] Re: Better/best operating system for SatPC32?

[Greg D]

And it's free. And that includes not having to pay for anti-virus 
software on top of paying for the O/S (though in this case apparently 
Win 7 is already there), or reboot for the ever-coming patches. And even 
if you use the free AV software, it still takes up valuable CPU and 
memory resources, which on a smaller machine can be a killer.

Uptime on this PC, by the way, is currently 224 days. OpenSuSE 12.1, on 
an old 2 ghz AMD Sempron. I think I have 3gb of RAM installed, but it 
used to have a lot less 224 days ago (under a gig, if I recall). My PC 
at work is running OpenSusE 11.4, and it's been up for well over 200 
days as well. I also run VMPlayer with Windows 7 inside, but it's up and 
down like a yo-yo with the corporate-driven patches that get applied.

APRSIS/32, if you want to run APRS, works excellently in Wine on Linux, 
much better in my opinion than XASTIR. I have also run several of the 
Windows-based satellite tracking programs in Wine, if you need 
compatibility, though I prefer gpredict.

Ubuntu is a very popular Linux distro, but I prefer OpenSuSE. The user 
experience is more main-stream (but without being too Windows-like), and 
all of the system configuration utilities are bundled into a single 
setup tool, so they're easy to find and have the same look & feel.

Greg KO6TH


gordonjcp at gjcp.net wrote:
> On Sat, May 18, 2013 at 10:33:18AM -0400, Philip Jenkins wrote:
>> The refurbs are pretty cheap, so I may get two and install XP on one and
>> some flavor of Linux on the other (I'm the most familiar with Ubuntu (but
>> that isn't saying much), but open to suggestions.) Does Linux still support
>> serial ports?
> Yes, of course!  There's the added advantage that you don't need additional drivers for USB-to-serial converters, too, which takes a bit more uncertainty out of things.
>
> If it ever was supported, it should be supported now.  Okay, the kernel-mode soundmodem stuff has gone, but that was a stupid idea ;-)  Remember those old floppy connector tape drives?  They're still supported - if you can get a real genuine FDC to play with...
>