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CHIRP[/caption]
In the past I've been frustrated by a lack of Linux-supported software
for programming my amateur radios. Sure, the Kenwood software that they
gave you to use would kinda work under Wine but it's Wine and who wants
to operate under that? Last year I discovered a project that aimed to
solve my problem. CHIRP is an open
source alternative to other pieces of software that allow you to program
your radios. Supporting many of the current radio models, this software
allows you to create your channel list and then use that on every radio
you own.
Last year when I tried the software it wouldn't program frequencies in
the 70-cm band correctly. That bug has been fixed and many features
added as well. There are even static lists of frequencies one might want
to include on their radio including the FRS channels, 60m channels,
NOAA weather radio channels, and
others. The software even interfaces with online frequency repositories
making it easy to program repeaters into your radio when you are
traveling to a new area.
The software is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows and is currently
available in the Fedora software repositories (sudo yum install
chirp).