Wired: GNU Radio Opens an Unseen World | Linux Today

Wired: GNU Radio Opens an Unseen World

Written By
Web Webster
Web Webster
Jun 6, 2006

“Matt Ettus has the sly smile of someone who sees the invisible.
His hands fly over the boards of his Universal Software Radio
Peripheral, or USRP, snapping them together with an antenna like
Lego bricks. Then he plugs in the naked boards to a USB 2 cable
snaking to his Linux laptop.

“After few minutes of normal Linux messing around (‘Takes
forever to boot…. Haven’t got the sound driver working yet….’)
he turns the laptop around to reveal a set of vibrating lines in
humps and dips across the screen, like a wildly shaking wireframe
mountain range. ‘Here,’ he explains, ‘I’m grabbing FM…'”

Complete
Story

Web Webster

Web Webster

Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.

Linux Today Logo

LinuxToday is a trusted, contributor-driven news resource supporting all types of Linux users. Our thriving international community engages with us through social media and frequent content contributions aimed at solving problems ranging from personal computing to enterprise-level IT operations. LinuxToday serves as a home for a community that struggles to find comparable information elsewhere on the web.

Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2026 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.