sudo aptitude install git libusb-1.0-0-dev libc6-dev librtlsdr-dev

git  clone  git://github.com/MalcolmRobb/dump1090.git
cd  dump1090
make
 [djt] I got errors at this point where pkg-config could not be found on my minimal Linux.  Installing pkg-config cured this problem, but if you had no errors from the make step you will not need not need to do steps 5 and 6.
 
sudo  apt-get install  pkg-config
make



web-interface
./dump1090 --interactive --net --net-http-port 8080 && iceweasel http://localhost:8080
Normal usage
To capture traffic directly from your RTL device and show the captured traffic on standard output, just run the program without options at all:
./dump1090


To just output hexadecimal messages:
./dump1090 --raw


To run the program in interactive mode:
./dump1090 --interactive


To run the program in interactive mode, with networking support, and connect with your browser to http://localhost:8080 to see live traffic:
./dump1090 --interactive --net


In iteractive mode it is possible to have a less information dense but more "arcade style" output, where the screen is refreshed every second displaying all the recently seen aircrafts with some additional information such as altitude and flight number, extracted from the received Mode S packets.
Using files as source of data
To decode data from file, use:
./dump1090 --ifile /path/to/binfile


The binary file should be created using rtl_sdr like this (or with any other program that is able to output 8-bit unsigned IQ samples at 2Mhz sample rate).
rtl_sdr -f 1090000000 -s 2000000 -g 50 output.bin


In the example rtl_sdr a gain of 50 is used, simply you should use the highest gain availabe for your tuner. This is not needed when calling Dump1090 itself as it is able to select the highest gain supported automatically.
It is possible to feed the program with data via standard input using the --ifile option with "-" as argument.
Additional options
Dump1090 can be called with other command line options to set a different gain, frequency, and so forth. For a list of options use:
./dump1090 --help


Everything is not documented here should be obvious, and for most users calling it without arguments at all is the best thing to do.