One missing package, and a radio that "just doesn't start"
The operator's recollection was that the trouble had been library-related. It was — and the vendor's own forum says so.
The symptom that tells you nothing
You launch ExpertSDR3. Nothing happens. No dialog, no traceback, no log worth reading — the process starts and exits. That absence of information is the most useful clue in the whole problem, because it narrows things considerably.
From Qt 6.5 onward, the xcb platform plugin requires xcb-cursor0 /
libxcb-cursor0, and newer distributions stopped installing it by default. Without
it Qt cannot load its platform plugin, and a Qt application exits before it has a UI to
complain through. Hence: silence.
sudo apt install libxcb-cursor0Expert Electronics' forum has a thread titled "Solution for Linux if ExpertSDR3 does not start" covering Debian 12, Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04, and Linux Mint 21.3. One package.
What it tells you beyond the fix
The fix is also a disclosure. If the missing piece is the Qt 6.5 xcb plugin dependency, then ExpertSDR3 is a Qt 6 application — which lines up with its OpenGL 3.3 requirement, and tells you what kind of dependency problems to expect next.
The boundary worth knowing before you start
ExpertSDR2 and ExpertSDR3 are closed-source proprietary binaries. You cannot recompile them or patch them. But their dependencies — Qt, libxcb, OpenSSL, libicu — are all open source, and that is the entire lever:
The fix is never "patch the app". It is always supply the library the app expects.
Don't guess. Ask the binary.
The temptation at this point is to start installing things. Resist it — one command tells you exactly what is wrong:
ldd /path/to/ExpertSDR3 | grep "not found"Anything listed is the precise problem. Empty output is equally valuable: it means the libraries are fine and the fault lies elsewhere — the internal network adapter, or a firmware mismatch. Those are completely different evenings, and this is the command that tells you which one you're having.
One thing not to do. When a library has genuinely been removed from your
release — libssl1.1 after Ubuntu 22.04 is the usual case — do not install the
old version system-wide. That downgrades TLS for everything on the machine, including
sshd. Scope it to the one process with LD_LIBRARY_PATH instead.
The second failure, which looks identical
There is a separate issue that presents as "the software can't see the radio" with nothing visibly wrong. Bug tracker issue #91: the transceiver is detected only if it is powered and its link is up when the application starts. Plug it in afterwards and it is never found. Still open, no developer response.
On an MB1 this matters more than it sounds, because the SDR module hangs off an internal USB-LAN adapter. A NetworkManager timing problem at boot produces exactly that symptom. So the order is forced: interface first, then launch.
The full write-up, including the three escalating strategies and a symptom table, lives on the ExpertSDR on Linux page.