COMMUNITY PROJECT

DragonOS

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and DragonOS is the straight line between you and software-defined radio. It is a free Linux distribution that arrives with a comprehensive ecosystem of open-source RF and SDR tools already installed and working, supported by a community of enthusiasts, developers, researchers, and RF professionals around the world.

DragonOS

Why it exists

Building an SDR environment yourself means working through driver conflicts, competing dependencies, and toolchains that disagree with one another, and often ending up with a machine that never quite works right again afterward. Enough people have lost a working computer to a weekend of dependency resolution that buying a second machine starts to look reasonable.

DragonOS ships the environment already assembled and verified. The first thing you do with it is receive a signal rather than debug an install.

Verified hardware support. Works out of the box with RTL-SDR, HackRF One, LimeSDR, BladeRF, and a wide range of other inexpensive and capable radios.

Tools already installed. A broad suite of open-source SDR software, preinstalled and configured. Source-installed packages live under /usr/src; the rest come from package managers.

Runs how you want it to. Boot the live image without installing anything, install alongside Windows, macOS, or Linux in a dual-boot configuration, or run it in a virtual machine.

Built in the open. Free to download with no account required, developed in public, and shaped by the people who use it.

Download

Two builds are maintained. Take the most recent unless you need an older base.

x86_64, for desktop and laptop. Lubuntu based. Noble, FocalX, and Focal builds are published in the same project. The live session user is live with no password; set your own credentials on install.

aarch64, for Raspberry Pi. Debian based, built for the Raspberry Pi and requiring a 32 GB or larger SD card. Default credentials are dragon / dragon, and the SDRPlay API installer sits under Other.

Download for x86_64
Download for Raspberry Pi

Getting help and contributing

DragonOS support runs through the community, not through a ticket queue. These are the places where questions get answered and where the work happens in public.

Code and issues. Tooling, forks, and works in progress live on GitHub under alphafox02. Issues and pull requests are the right route for anything about the code itself.

Wiki and discussion. Setup notes and accumulated answers live on the project wiki, with tickets and a discussion board alongside the downloads. The wiki is a work in progress and contributions are welcome.

Videos and walkthroughs. Demonstrations of specific tools recorded against real hardware, which is usually faster than reading about them.

Reporting a problem. Tickets on the project page are the place for bugs in a build. Include your hardware, the build you are running, and what you were trying to do.

GitHub · Wiki · Discussion · Tickets · Videos

How this relates to WarDragon

WarDragon is a commercial drone detection product built on the same foundation, manufactured and distributed by Millenium Products. The two are related but separate. DragonOS stays free and open regardless of what happens on the commercial side, and nothing on the commercial side requires anything from the community side.

The practical difference is support. Questions about DragonOS belong in the community channels above. Questions about a WarDragon system you have purchased go through the support page, where they are tracked and routed.

If you are here for the distribution, that is the whole story and nothing is being sold to you.

Passive RF detection and situational awareness only. Performance varies by RF environment, antenna placement, aircraft type, and deployment configuration.