My name is Tom, Call K8WDX, I spent about 2 hours chatting with Peter OK2CQR Sunday
evening about CQRlog and the number of problems that have risen recently, It started out with
a problem that I was having that we never addressed. Peter and I discussed the issues in general
and I made some suggestions that he is going to implement immediately. Peter is worried about
user’s of CQRlog being upset over this change, but as I discussed with him that this is the best thing
for Peter, his family, CQRlog and the users, for this reason these changes must take place. First I will
discuss the problem, then will tell everyone the solution.
The problem is that with Linux there are so many distros, and versions of distros, for this reason
Peter has 6 virtual boxes going, with different distros running, most of the time when a problem
gets fixed there then it is broke here, then fix here and it is broke somewhere else, it is a huge issue.
Peter spends a huge amount of time answering emails and forum requests, all in his spare time.
Not to mention fixing or trying to fix the issues. As the user base increases these problems will
increase and more time will be required to fix rather than improve what I consider to be the best
logger program out there.
I have to admit I am one of those that want to try the newest distro, and this is also one of the
problems. Some want the new, some keep the old, every 6 months when a new distro comes out
Peter is faced with a whole bunch of problems, think about it Ubuntu now, then Mint, and all
the others, it creates a bunch of problems. All the time, and right when he works through them
guess what another 6 months have gone by and we start all over again. This is the one thing
about Linux that can be a problem and in this case it is a huge problem.
This takes away from his family time and his operating time, mostly from his family time. This is
not right. As I discussed with him that his family is way more important than anything else. He has
a beautiful wife and great kids that require his attention. He has a great love for the Ham Radio
Hobby as well as CQRlog and HamQTH. All these problems are making him frustrated and sad.
This is not fair to Peter and most of all his family and those great kids that he has, not to mention
his wife.
Here is what I recommended to Peter and he agreed 100%. He is worried that some users will be
upset, but as I told him, for his sanity and for the future of CQRlog he must do this.
As of Sunday 5/6/2012 the only distro that will be supported by CQRlog will be Linux Ubuntu
12.04 LTS, the next supported versions will be Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, as Peter updates his system
this will change the supported version. This must be done. This will free up time for Peter to
improve CQRlog and make it better rather that spend a majority of the time fixing stuff.
Peter and I hope everyone will understand. A few suggestions, set up a Shack only PC, or duel
boot your current PC. If you want support. If not you are on your own. I am in the same boat
as many of you, I like Mint, how ever I will no be using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS in the shack. Until Peter
upgrades his PC. I hope all will understand and no be to upset over this change, we all hate change,
but for a better experience with CQRlog and new features, and faster bug fixes this is a necessary
change. Tom K8WDX
K8WDX - agreed. Something must be done but...
Petr OK2CQR is one of my best friends (if not the best at all) and I am quite familiar with his situation. Actually, the mess around distros can be worse than described, the time consumption can be even higher than many of us can imagine...
Started in 1996, I am grown on Slackware, some time spent with Gentoo, Arch Linux, my first Ubuntu was the 9.04, since then the quality varies (honestly said, a new version is worse than the previous). A year or so was a happy user of PCLinuxOS, now returned to Ubuntu 12.04. Never loved the 'great' ones like SuSE, Fedora or Debian. That's my Linux story which teached me that 'Linux is not Linux' - if you once learn what is behind Red Hat, Slackware and Gentoo you get very useful basic skills until ... you bounce across Debian. This great distro is unfortunately very different from others but there are some Debian forks (derivatives) which became very popular among many thousands of users. And the most popular is Ubuntu.
It was a big pain to set up a machine which can be used in ham shack if we should install almost everything from source code (Slackware users are familiar with this). Ubuntu stays on opposite pole, it is built as a general purpose distro for Mrs. Jane Doe who needs something for her usual home work. Even worse, Ubuntu comes with pretty bad defaults (it is very unusual that a regular user is not privileged to touch the ports etc.). Oh, pardon, I wanted to say clearly than many Linux users have a good reason to hate Ubuntu.
I want also to say that the "ubuntization" of CQRLOG would be definitely a BAD idea. I would suggest instead that we should involve maintainers for other distros. The development must continue (new features, interfacing to other services etc.) and we would be happy if Petr OK2CQR will stay here as the principal "Master of Ceremonies", supported by (possibly many) active hams contributing with their on-air experience and a bunch of Linux skilled maintainers of other distros who will make nothing else than compile the 'official' sources for 'their' distro. Again, the main development must be kept centralized, the maintainers should be responsible to produce a binary working in exactly the same way as the 'main' works.
Agree, Peter cant continue to spin all the plates, they will come tumbling down. Tom K8WDX
Tom K8WDX
Hi all CQRlog users,
I agree with all, Petr has a lot of work just to let CQRlog users happy but nowadays it is almost impossible with all Linux versions. Focusing in one dist could be good or bad, it depends of our personal opinion, however for Petr, and his great family, is much better.
As a suggestion for those who do not like Ubuntu 12.04 I am working with Kubuntu 12.04 without problems. It has KDE but works fine and compiles CQRlog fine from svn.
Best 73 to all, specially for Petr for his great work.
CT1DRB
David Quental
Tom, Peter, etc.,
Absolutely agree, Peter`s family and private life has to be prefered to ham activities - we must accept, that our radio is the hobby only in fact.
On the other hand it`s sad to leave cqrlog because of Ubuntu/Canonical unity installed in new versions of that OS. Many of us go to Mint hereat. Perhaps noone from Ununtu community didn`t presume ham`s complication like this - incidence on application`s users. But it`s most of OS producents` behavior (remember the reason for the way from Win to Ubu).
For the first step I`d like to downgrade to 1.3.1 and I`ll be looking for the log pgm not dependenced on OS so much. Maybe it`s an advise for many of us.
Enyway - thanks Peter, thanks Tom.
Pavel
Pavel, the good news is Mint and Ubuntu are the same, so I don't think you will have much of a problem, I found that most of the time the same issues arise in both, my suggestion to you is to as I am doing, grab a book and start to really dig deep into the OS system you are using, you may find it to be a bit fun and a bit of a challenge, for me the learning continues, I am by no means a Linux expert, {a newbie at best} but I have found my way around and actually enjoy trouble shooting issues and find at least with Linux if I figure it out I can fix it. I think Martin is on the right track, what Peter really needs is some other ham's that are Linux power users with the distro they are currently using, to step up to the plate. Tom K8WDX
Tom K8WDX
hello by flavio ik3ocd, I will agree 100/100, family health and then a hobby. I use mint but for the sake of Peter I'll use linux ubuntu, ubuntu is fine,
scuaste my English is not perfect.
friendly hello and 73 from flavio ik3ocd .... peter the great
I totally agree with all, family life must always come first and I bet Petr's day job comes under pressure too!.
As a Mint user I don't think this decision will affect me much. However I would appreciate the opportunity to roll back two versions. Since the initial upgrade to 1.4 I have not been able to get my FT2000 to talk to CQRLog. Since 1.4.1 I can't even open preferences to play with my settings to try and sort this out, so a roll back to the previous 1.3.x version would be appreciated. Anyone know if this is possible and how I go about it?
73'd De Dave, G8FXM O/S Linux Mint 18.1 KDE Plasma 64 bit g8fxm@uksmg.org
Ignore me, I just installed the DEB directly and problem solved.
73'd De Dave, G8FXM O/S Linux Mint 18.1 KDE Plasma 64 bit g8fxm@uksmg.org
No question, this is a difficult topic. For those of you that aren't keen on Ubuntu's Unity, there is Xubuntu using XFCE that works well as well as Kubuntu featuring KDE. Programs that work on Ubuntu will likely work on those two derivatives without issue. Mint may be a bit trickier but since its main release is still tracking Ubuntu, I wouldn't expect too much pain there either.
Kamal, KA6MAL, the maintainer of CQRlog for Ubuntu, is also the maintainer for Debian. As I understand it, there are Lazarus issues that are keeping the newer CQRlog versions out of Debian/Ubuntu.
The people running Arch are pretty good at figuring things out, so a build package will likely be maintained.
I'm not a part of the RPM world and that is where someone may want to step up.
I wish Petr well and that he will be able to balance his time toward his family and other interests. I'm not into learning Pascal so I probably won't be digging into the CQRlog source, but this should not be a one man show. In other words, CQRlog would probably benefit from more contributors. Right now helping to maintain Hamlib and dipping into the SO2SDR source is keeping me occupied.
73, de Nate >>
Petr can't supply all of us with ready to run and perfect matched versions of CQRLOG ..it's really a miracle how he managed to get though all the stuff up to now and the only answer to that was clearly given by Tom.. this could only be done by a single person if he/she is 110% focused for 24h a day on this project.
Of course, fun is the fuel that drives this kind of self slavery :) But there may be a point, fun turns into frustration because you can't serve all ideas and suggestion, bug fix reports and of course there are so many most important points in life.
Petr's work is a great gift for us all.. and it is up to us to take this gift and support it and take away as many routine work as possible from Petr.
The project is in really good shape and it's time to spread the word (!) and try to find maintainers for YOU favourite Distro.
Remember.. a good Distro is a Distro with as many ham radio software included as possible.. and CQRLOG is really a MUST HAVE, isn’t it?
Just found cqrlog 1.4.1-1 in Debian SID.. so there is a progress and I press my thumbs that work load balancing will also work for CQRLOG .. and that means after all and for all FUN continuous :)
If this fails, it's the fault of the ham radio community ...and don'te even think to blame anyone else for it but our self.
(there is really no Distro that is not looking for volunteers for all kind of work on all skill levels.. yes.. YOU can get involved too!)
73 de Olaf / DL5YBZ
New OS based on Debian Stable to be rolling release, but with up todate Software ie;Firefox 12 Thunderbird 12 etc Developer Ikey Doherty is very supportive, (I just requested it and he obliged ) SolusOS v2 is in the works and will likely draw from what is now Debian unstable, which is supported by Petr which should give us CQRlog 1.4.1.. Gnome 2.3 is still the desktop with, a Gnome 2 look alike based on Gnome 3 in the works (Not MATE) I dumbed LMDE for this OS, and never looked back! Note; Ikey was the Original developer of LMDE, but moved on to develop as he saw fit.
Darrel VE7EME
Darrel VE7EME
http://solusos.com/blog/category/packages/
Darrel
VE7EME
Darrel VE7EME
I fully understand Peter's dilemma, and appreciate that he would also want to spend more time with his family.
Sadly for me, I cannot bring myself to install Ubuntu, as in my opinion it is an absolute abortion.
I will try Kubuntu and see how it goes, but it looks like this might be the end of the road for me and CQRLog.
I offer my thanks for all the work that Peter has put into CQRLog to date.
It is very much appreciated.
Hello Wallace,
CQRLOG will be distributed also as packaged completely application directory. I'll continue to provide support for all CQRLOG users. The problem is only with packaging the app to RPM and other typer of Linux packages. I can only create deb packages for Ubuntu 12.04 and Debian unstable right now. But if you will have any problem with any distribution and drop me an email or write here to the forum, I'll try to help you as much as I can. CQRLOG is not Ubuntu only software.
73 Petr, OK2CQR
--
http://HamQTH.com/ok2cqr
https://ok2cqr.com
Hi Petr,
Many thanks for your reply and also your offer of help.
I am testing version 1.4.1 right now on Kubuntu 12.04, and so far so good with no problems.
Fingers crossed.
Kind regards from Wallace MM0AMV
Hi Petr,
Here is an update.
Three days down the track and CQRLog 1.4.1 running like a dream under Kubuntu 12.04 64-bit.
Problem resolved.
Many thanks once again.
73 Wallace MM0AMV
Hi Petr,
Since I am using openSuse, I used the tar package. Do I understand correctly that that will still be available?
Thanks.
Rick, KK4GGL
Hi Rick,
yes, of course! I will continue creating tar.gz with application binary. The problem is, that I can't keep update repo for older Ubuntu versions but packages and tar.gz will be available.
73 Petr
--
http://HamQTH.com/ok2cqr
https://ok2cqr.com
Petr, you have done great job again. SolusOS 1.1 and CQRLog 1.4.1 works good with "Mint packages" from download page.
Timo OH7JHA
I endorse Timo's remarks and CQRLOG runs just fine on Xubuntu which is a great non bloated ubuntu 12.04 desktop. Again Petr many thanks for an excellent piece of software.
73 Graeme ZL2APV
Hi all,
since 2011 Ubuntu gets pretty annoying, especially this Unity desktop and all this fancy stuff which comes from the MacOS. Currently I have a 12.04 with the new Gnome desktop here running in the Shack. The Gnome Shell is annoying too, but a bit less than Unity and in the meantime I got used to it. Had Xubuntu some weeks on this machine, but I don't like it. I'm currently waiting for the next stable release of Debian, so hopefully I have a pure Debian with a pure Gnome Shell then and not this messy Unity/Gnome mix-up.
As long as CQRLOG works with the next stable release of Debian, I'm pretty fine with a focus on deb packages :)
73
Ulf DK5TX