What's new for amateur radio operators
Fedora 11 includes a number of applications and libraries that are of interest to amateur radio operators and electronic hobbyists. Many of these applications are included in the Fedora Electronic Lab spin. For a complete list of amateur radio applications available within Fedora see Applications for amateur radio on the wiki.
Sound card applications
fldigi
Fedora 11 includes version 3.10 of fldigi. Changes from Fedora 10 include many enhancements to the waterfall and logging, along with dozens of minor changes to the user interface and bug fixes. For a complete list of changes see the upstream project's site at http://www.w1hkj.com/fldigi-distro/.
xfhell
Version 1.9 of xfhell includes some improvements in handling the PTT line and additional flexibility in adjusting window sizes, as well as some bug fixes. The project's site is at http://5b4az.chronos.org.uk/pages/digital.html.
soundmodem
soundmodem is now back in Fedora. soundmodem 0.10 provides a way to use your sound card as a modem for digital applications such as AX.25. The upstream's project page is http://www.baycom.org/~tom/ham/soundmodem/.
Software Defined Radio
gnuradio
gnuradio has been updated to version 3.1.3. This is largely a bugfix update.
Circuit Design and Simulation
The gEDA suite has been updated to 20081231. This includes the packages geda-docs, geda-examples, geda-gattrib, geda-gnetlist, geda-gschem, geda-gsymcheck, geda-symbols and geda-utils. These are all bugfix releases. In addition, gerbv, pcb, and ngspice are released as part of the gEDA suite, but released separately.
gerbv
gerbv 2.1.0 includes improvements to object selection, improved exporting, and more flexibility in dealing with drill files. The complete release notes for this package can be found at http://gerbv.sourceforge.net/ANNOUNCEMENT-2.1.0.
pcb
pcb has been updated to 20081128. Included among the improvements is a new 'Ben mode' that exports a 'photograph' of the board as a .png file. There are also some minor improvements in drill handling and a number of bug fixes. The complete release notes for this version are available at http://pcb.sourceforge.net/news.html#20081128.
ngspice
ngspice has been updated to version 18. Changes include:
- Tclspice simulator library has been merged with ngspice. Now you can compile ngapice or tclspice by asserting a configure switch. See README.tcl
- New options have been introduced: brief, listing, autostop and scale
- Support for .lib file has been introduced. This allows the use of third party model libraries in ngspice.
- .measure statements: avg, integ, rms, max, min, delay, param
- .global statements t support for global nodes whose name is not expanded when flattening the netlist.
- .func macros for inlining functions into netlists.
- Improved the numparam library to support fully parametrized netlists.
- BSIM model binning.
- new multi-input gate VCVS using XSPICE extensions.
iverilog
iverliog has been updated to 0.9.20081118. This is largely a bugfix update.
LinLog
LinLog has been updated to version 0.4.
qle
qle 0.0.10 is new to Fedora 11. qle is a graphic QSO log viewer, log editor and QSO logger. It logs (or modifies) QSOs directly in a fast and light-weight SQLite database.