RXCLUS and Linux

I currently develop only a Windows version of RXCLUS, although I would be pleased to provide the ham community with a Linux version, but I'm afraid I will not have the time in a foreseable future to do this.

I was surprised to be informed by a few OM's that they could start RXCLUS on their Linux system using the Wine Windows "emulator". The main problem is that the setup utility which installs the program on Windows does not work with Wine and, as it isn't developed by me, I have no way to fix this. So I decided to provide a ZIP archive with all needed files in the correct structure; this can be found on my download page.

Please note that this procedure should be considered as experimental. I give no warranty at all that RXCLUS will work on YOUR Linux system; I can just tell that it works at least on some such systems.

Tests on an Ubuntu distribution

I tested it myself with Ubuntu 5.10 configurations together with recent versions of Wine (0.9.8 and 0.9.11) and was surprised that RXCLUS could be started without any additional configuration, and most functions worked flawlessly!

Here is how the main window of RXCLUS looks on my system:

This is looking quite unusual in comparison with Windows, but it works! A few more screen captures can be found at the bottom of this page.

What works normally:

• program start;
• all windows (main, options, databases, statistics...);
• calculations;
• customization;
• telnet connections;
• Internet update of the LoTW database;
  
• voice alarms, including CW (WAV);
• printing.

What is not perfect but usable:

• Packet radio with a TNC (may require some configuration of wine - see below);
• exiting the program (works ok most of the time; but sometimes the program freezes and you have to kill the wine task);
  
• fonts are often too wide, which may break some alignments, especially in the options.

What can't be used:

• CW (SYS) alarms, but you can use CW (WAV) or voice announcements instead;
• Packet radio with AGW Packet Engine.

How to try this installation

• download the latest version of Wine or use the one included with your Linux distribution (may be a bit old);
• install Wine (no additional configuration is needed at least with Ubuntu 5.10);
• download the ZIP archive of RXCLUS without setup from my download page;
• unzip this archive at the place of your choice. Be sure that the directory information is kept (you should see 2 subdirectories "scripts" and "sounds" in the main directory);
• open a terminal window and move to the directory where the executable file of RXCLUS is located (make sure it has the executable flag);
• try to start the program with the command: wine RXCLUS83.exe

How to use a serial TNC

I first believed this was not possible, but indeed it works, but may be a bit tricky to configure (especially if your TNC is not connected to COM1).

In all cases, a symbolic link needs to be created in the .wine directory located in your home directory. If your TNC is connected to the first serial port, type:

ln -s /dev/ttyS0 com1   ( for COM2: ln -s /dev/ttyS1 com2 and so on )

In RXCLUS, you can configure most parameters of the port, except the port number (no COM ports are shown). Select "Serial" in the Interface panel and the correct Baud rate. This should do the job if your TNC is on COM1.

If you use another COM port, you can set the correct port by editing the user.reg file located in your .wine directory. Search for RXCLUS; this will bring you at the start of the section where all configuration parameters for RXCLUS are located. Then scroll down until you find the "COMPortNr" parameter, which should look like this:

"COMPortNr"=dword:00000001

Replace the "1" by your port number (using the Windows numeration, for example "2" if you need to use COM2).

Save the file and restart RXCLUS.

I would be interested to know on which Linux distributions, and with which version of Wine, this procedure was tested, successfully or not. This information will be made available on this page and may be very useful to other users!

A few more screen captures:

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