Gorizont-rtlsdr: Another Linux OS Distro with Built in RTL-SDR Support & Software

A few days ago we posted about DragonOS, which is a Linux ISO file with several built in SDR programs that the creator Aaron has been working on during his COVID-19 lockdown period. We've now got a second lockdown inspired Linux distribution called "gorizont-rtlsdr" which was submitted by Steve Cox. The distro is based on Xubuntu 18.04 and focuses only on software for RTL-SDRs. Steve writes:

gorizont linux 1.0 is a live, USB bootable or VM .iso image, and my first attempt at sharing a project like this. It's built specifically for rtl_sdr/ RTL2832U family dongles, no other devices will be supported in the future (although drivers can be installed if required). It's meant for the cheapest, most available hardware out there.

I think there's a useful niche for this distro, Skywave Linux is getting a bit long-in-the-tooth and un-updated, and the recently reviewed DragonOS, whilst good, is a little complicated for beginners to use. gorizont concentrates on purely terrestrial HF/VHF/UHF analogue and digital signal exploration and decoding, hence the name. It also provides instant DAB+ and FM radio reception for emergency information using RTL V3 stock antennae.

It's built for customisation and compilation of evolving software, hence it's rather portly size. A pretty full suite of dev libraries and repos come as included. Users can also create a bootable USB image or .iso of an updated system using Systemback if gorizont is run as a VM.

We didn't see a list of programs preinstalled, but from the Readme it appears to have at least GNU Radio, GQRX, multimon-ng, DSD+, welle.io, PyBOMBs, wine32, sox, as well as a preset Virtual Audio sync set up through pulseaudio for piping audio between programs. We expect that many more programs will also have been preinstalled.