Open Source Ham Radio Software

Updated 2025/04/12: Turn your PC into the ultimate shortwave radio. Skywave Linux is an X86, 64 bit live environment configured for accessing internet accessible software defined radio receivers. With this operating system, you may tune in popular stations or amateur radio, aeronautical, maritime, or other signals received at remote internet servers around the world. For a live map of the best KiwiSDR and WebSDR servers and a nice "click to tune" interface, Use the installed SDR-Map utility to find radio servers and listen from interesting places. Also, I have set up a self-updating SDR Map at https://rx.skywavelinux.com. An internet radio streamer application is also included for popular studio streams. Bring it up with keys [Super] + [S]. SDR software is configured to operate with popular plug-in devices, such as the RTL-SDR dongles, Airspy, and, HackRF radios. Skywave Linux is built on Debian Sid. It is primarily a live environment, but can be fully installed.

radiOS is a ham radio-centric, customized version of Arch Linux. Arch is generally recommended to experienced Linux users but radiOS should help you to get to know one of the most versatile and fun Linux distributions around. Not to mention use your radio without having to compile a bunch of programs yourself. radiOS comes with tools for use with amateur radio, especially SOTA, POTA, and GNU Radio Companion with HackRF Software Defined Radio. If it doesn't work as expected, or you would like to request additional functionality, please let me know. -This ISO is a live image but all the tools to install Arch Linux are included. -Right click anywhere for a menu. Connect to wifi via Network Manager in the System Utilities sub-menu. -As of 01JUNE2024 all packages have been updated, some have been removed due to difficulty in maintaining non-standard package dependencies, some useful links were added to Firefox, as well as a sample GRC for an SDR FM receiver.