America's Hams Embrace Linux

Anonymous Coward writes "The current survey question over on the eham site shows that around 40% of Amateur Radio operators that responded to the survey are using Linux/Unix as an operating system in some form or other. Part of the ham radio charter is to 'experiment and innovate'...seems the tradition is alive and well in ham radio. Some of the comments are interesting as well ...What's Amateur/Ham Radio? See www.eham.net/newham/"

Comments

Great idea!

[Jennifer E. Elaan]

What a wonderful idea! Let's poll a bunch of people who are, in large part, ELECTRONICS HOBBYESTS, and ask them what OS they prefer!

HAM radio types are often some of the most technically knowledgable in the world. I'll bet that even the ones that still use Windows know enough Linux to survive. They may even have legit reasons for using Windows (like certain Windows-based EDA software still beats anything on Linux...)

I have another great idea. Let's poll KERNEL HACKERS and ask what OS they run :P

Hams and Linux

[Lxy]

This is weird because I was asking a guy just today on why so many hams DON'T use linux. Most of them have at least heard of it, if not tried it.

Hams are technically literate folks who don't pay for anything if they don't have to. If you can build it, why pay someone for it? I'm shocked that most of them can make a radio out of some wire and a resistor because it's cheap, yet choose to pay $200 for a Windows license.

And as for the poll, I assume the same rules apply on eham.com as /., I quote::

• This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
  

So whether or not we should put any stock into a poll on another website and make an article out of it makes me wonder.

Let's be honest

[$eRvmanIO]

As a ham and a linux/windows/blah blah blah user, there are many reasons why hams gravitate to linux:

1. Elitism - Yes, Linux users and Hams DO have something in common.
2. Technical aspects - speaks for itself
3. Cheapness - Combine used computer parts from Hamfests and free OS and you got the spirit of Ham Radio operators.

Re:Geeks using Linux?!

[gilesjuk]

Given such things as i2c and other methods for low level access is it any wonder?

Hardware access in Windows becomes more abstracted and obfuscated with each release, much to the detriment of things like accurate timing which is essential for things like MIDI and controlling some hardware.

Linux gives the hacker plenty of ways to poke around with hardware ports etc..

Re:This is kinda cool...

[rekkanoryo]

I know you are trolling, but I feel compelled to answer this. Mandrake is easier to use for him, both for the installation and everyday use. With Mandrake (and RH, SuSE, and other similar distros), X configuration is done with the GUI during install. Just about everything he needed was included with Mandrake in the default installation. Less shell work is necessary with Mandrake--in fact, he's not yet found the need to use an xterm. And even if FreeBSD is more "stable," stability isn't everything. Do you think Windows got where it is by being rock-solid?

Besides, does FreeBSD provide support for ham radio like Linux does? I'm sure the guy wants to eventually integrate everything into one simple solution.

For him, Mandrake just worked. FreeBSD needed a fair amount more configuration for his preferences in a workspace, but Mandrake could meet them with the installation options. He's more or less a normal user--e-mail, light browsing, Solitaire and Mahjong, etc. Nothing overly deep. Linux distros still have a little way to go to be viable for the masses (like him), but FreeBSD is leaps and bounds behind in being ready for the masses. Just my $0.02.