FreeDV for Ubuntu

[Rick, WA6III]

Howdy all,

I am helping a friend install FreeDV on his Ubuntu 22.04 laptop.

After a little searching around I can only find FreeDV for Ubuntu at around ver 1.7.x  or so.

Does anyone know if ver 1.9.4 has been packaged in the .deb format?

[Mooneer Salem]

Hi Rick,

Ubuntu 23.10 is apparently up to 1.8.11, FWIW: https://packages.ubuntu.com/mantic/freedv. Still not the absolute latest, but packages are typically at least a few releases behind anyway for most distros.

BTW, speaking of packaging, what are your guys' thoughts on stuff like Flatpak? Is there any value in the project generating such a package itself when we release new Windows and macOS versions, or do you guys prefer the packages that distro maintainers put out?

Thanks,

-Mooneer K6AQ

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[Rick, WA6III]

Mooneer,

Thanks for the quick reply on this!

I am probably not the guy to ask about it because I have never really used Ubuntu to any extent.  I helped my friend set it up on his laptop because I have to say, Ubuntu is really the most popular,  most supported distro out there and I wanted to make it ewasy for him.

I have been using Open SuSE  for my main desktop since about 2001 and I usually stick with the OpenSuSE repos + Packman repo for NON-open source RPM's.

I have also tried the OpenSuSE build service but I haven't had time to put the effort into learning how to build RPM packages.

There's also a user that has been doing the actual RPM building he hasn't updated his RPM builds in quite some time.

This is the latest one I can find  (I'm running Tumbleweed on my older Mid 2012 MacBook Pro

https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home%3Awkazubski&package=freedv

I know Flatpak can be set up on OpenSuSE but I am not familiar with its operation.  Is it just a repository like any other?  Do they build RPM's or would you as the developer (or someone else) have to build the RPM from Source and then submit it to the Flatpak repo? (or in the case of Flatpak for Ubuntu, build a .deb package for Debian based distros?)

I know a few people running Linux that would LOVE to see current .deb packages and I for one would absolutely go for the latest RPM for OpenSuSE if it was available on Flatpack

By the way!!    Great contact with Mel (K0PFX) last night on 40M!  I was running about 300W & I think he was running about 100W and both of us were getting 10+ db SNR!  Very nice sounding audio running 700E

Cheers,

Rick

[Boudewijn (Bob) Tenty]

I prefer the packages that distro maintainers put out.

Bob VE3TOK

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-- 
There is nothing permanent except change
 
-Heraclitus

[Mooneer Salem]

Hi Rick,

My understanding is that Flatpak is most similar to how programs are packaged up for macOS (i.e. one "file" that's actually a folder internally). If such a package were to become available, it could be uploaded to one of the publicly available Flatpak repos (or potentially included in the GitHub releases page just like with macOS and Windows builds). 

Thanks,

-Mooneer K6AQ

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/digitalvoice/d0892883-c29e-40ec-a35c-b68ff8bc35b2n%40googlegroups.com.

[Mooneer Salem]

Hi Jaye,

Admittedly I'm still doing research on this, but would Snap be a possible alternative? It seems more common on Ubuntu and related distros compared to Flatpak, anyway.

Thanks,

-Mooneer K6AQ

On Tue, Nov 7, 2023 at 1:50 AM MJ Inabnit <ke6...@pobox.com> wrote:

There is a real failure currently with support for current ham programs
& utilities in Linux.  For a good amount of time, we had one of the
Ubuntu hackers making packages available with a separate repository via
Ubuntu.  However, he moved on and that project is now dormant as stone
henge :(  Those packages supported the Mint/Ubuntu community which is
still the largest segment of Linux ham usage.

Flatpak won't work for me on my aging hardware or my pi's.  This is way
I only run Mint now as Ubuntu decided Firefox will only be flatpak.

Unfortunately, many a linux user, hopelessly happy with a stable Linux
OS is now stymied with the lack of contemporary ham software :(

Mint is at 1.7 and no freedv reporter and there's no way to self report
on that platform.

Our Linux ham ecosystem really needs to develop a working/flexible build
tool for ham debs.

Tnx & 73
Jaye ke6sls

On 11/6/23 10:55 PM, Mooneer Salem wrote:
> Hi Rick,
>
> Ubuntu 23.10 is apparently up to 1.8.11,
> FWIW: https://packages.ubuntu.com/mantic/freedv. Still not the absolute
> latest, but packages are typically at least a few releases behind anyway
> for most distros.
>
> BTW, speaking of packaging, what are your guys' thoughts on stuff like
> Flatpak? Is there any value in the project generating such a package
> itself when we release new Windows and macOS versions, or do you guys
> prefer the packages that distro maintainers put out?
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Mooneer K6AQ
>
> On Mon, Nov 6, 2023 at 9:18 PM Rick, WA6III <myr...@gmail.com
> <mailto:myr...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Howdy all,
>
>     I am helping a friend install FreeDV on his Ubuntu 22.04 laptop.
>
>     After a little searching around I can only find FreeDV for Ubuntu at
>     around ver 1.7.x  or so.
>
>     Does anyone know if ver 1.9.4 has been packaged in the .deb format?
>

--

wishing you well
Jaye, ke6sls--via the toshiba w/thunderchicken

[Rick, WA6III]

Mooneer,

I was wondering just that!  If applications could be packaged for Linux and/or the MAC in such a way as to not need the distro it's installed on to have some or all dependencies.

For example, QT and/or WXwidgets and maybe others etc.... installed in the earlier "Leap"  versions of Open SuSE  were a a little older and might cause the application to "break" if they weren't updated but the versions required wasn't available in the "Factory" or even the Packman repos.   (although they sometimes were in OpenSuSE Tumblweed)

Releasing an application that could execute stand alone would make it very easy to run on any platform!

As long as application images could be guaranteed as "safe" this would be a great alternative to building  DMG/.deb/RPM's etc for every distro out there!!

The screenshot below is from https://appimage.org/

I think there'll be a LOT of interest in this once people figure out what it means!!

73/Rick

[Mooneer Salem]

One concern I've heard is that Flatpak and similar have overhead that may be significant depending on the user's system. That means that they'd likely only be a supplement on Linux (mainly for people who want to run newer versions of FreeDV more quickly) while distro-specific packages would still have a pretty big role.

That said, if you're interested in generating a Flatpak package for FreeDV and trying it out for yourself: https://github.com/drowe67/freedv-gui/pull/600. FWIW, it seems to work fine locally in brief testing, but I also only tested an RX only setup (i.e. no radio attached).

-Mooneer K6AQ

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[Boudewijn (Bob) Tenty]

I can confirm that. I tried the Flatpak version of a certain program and ended up with over 1 GByte of disk space of an otherwise small program in the deb package format . 
Flatpak is downloading all the dependencies and storing that in Flatpack's own directory, compared that to AppImage. Libraries what I may already have in my OS. You 
may also end with a lot of old libraries in Flatpak. You can easily get that bloating like what you have in Windows with X number of different dll versions of the same library.

Bob VE3TOK

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[Mooneer Salem]

I took a look at the test Flatpak build that I did for FreeDV and the folder containing it is something like 350 MB in size. Not great when initially installing but theoretically updates should require downloading a lot less (unless its copy of wxWidgets or Hamlib gets updated or something). Unfortunately as mentioned, this issue is fairly common across platforms (for example, macOS .apps typically include their own copies of .dylib files, too, albeit only for stuff that doesn't come with the OS).

-Mooneer K6AQ

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[Brian Morrison]

On Wed, 8 Nov 2023 15:42:44 -0800
Mooneer Salem <moo...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I took a look at the test Flatpak build that I did for FreeDV and the
> folder containing it is something like 350 MB in size. Not great when
> initially installing but theoretically updates should require
> downloading a lot less (unless its copy of wxWidgets or Hamlib gets
> updated or something). Unfortunately as mentioned, this issue is
> fairly common across platforms (for example, macOS .apps typically
> include their own copies of .dylib files, too, albeit only for stuff
> that doesn't come with the OS).

Faster, better, cheaper. Pick any two.

The price of that ease of installation is bloat, it's fine for these
packages to be available for those that want them provided that the
distro versions are nicely stripped down and use the shared objects
already installed.

--

Brian G8SEZ