Pär C wrote:

Why do they all rely upon the kernels AX.25 ?
Kiss mode is limited to packet radio (at least with
the TNC's that I've got) and why would I want to run
packet radio on hf ? Pactor is better for hf and that
means I can't use any of all those "terminals" that
really rely upon the kernels ax.25 to do all the work.
Why pay lots of money for a competent controller and
then make it really stupid by using kiss ?

They don't.

If you have a PTC data controller then take a look at kptc.
It's a KDE (X-windows) client to drive a PTC in just the way that you want.

You can find it at: http://kptc.sourceforge.net/

I found it by looking at: http://radio.linux.org.au/

regards
Terry