Linux distribution
Linux distribution
OpenELEC
(short for
Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center
) is a discontinued
Linux distribution
designed for
home theater PCs
and based on the
Kodi
(formerly
XBMC
) media player.
OpenELEC applies the "
just enough operating system
" principle. It is designed to consume relatively few resources and to boot quickly from
flash memory
.
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
OpenELEC
disk images
for the
Raspberry Pi
series and
Freescale i.MX6
based devices are also available.
[7]
The OpenELEC team released OpenELEC 4.0 on 5 May 2014, and this version features updated
XBMC
13.0 with further updated important parts of the operating system as well as the Linux kernel updated to version 3.14 and additional
device drivers
.
[8]
OpenELEC 4.0 also switched its init system to
systemd
.
[9]
In March 2016, OpenELEC was forked after "creative differences", taking most of its active developers at the time to join the new
LibreELEC
project.
[10]
[11]
[12]
Description
[
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]
OpenELEC provides a complete media center software suite that comes with a pre-configured version of Kodi and third-party addons with
retro
video game console emulators
and
DVR
plugins. OpenELEC is an extremely small and very fast-booting
Linux based
distribution, primarily designed to boot from
flash
memory card
such as
CompactFlash
or a
solid-state drive
, similar to that of the
XBMCbuntu
(formerly
XBMC Live
) distribution but specifically targeted to a minimum
set-top box
hardware setup based on an ARM SoCs or Intel x86 processor and graphics.
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[13]
History
[
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]
Since 2011, the OpenELEC team usually releases a new major version, following the Kodi release schedule.
Since 2014, specifics builds supporting a set of Graphics/GPU chipsets (ION, Fusion, Intel,...) are deprecated. And since version 6,
x86
builds are deprecated too. Builds are currently available for
x86-64
systems (as "Generic Build"),
Raspberry Pi
,
Raspberry Pi 2
, Raspberry Pi 3 and the first generation
Apple TV
.
OpenELEC version
|
Release date
|
Kodi version
|
Kernel
|
1
|
1.0
|
20 October 2011
|
10.1
|
Dharma
|
|
2
|
2.0
|
16 October 2012
|
11.0
|
Eden
|
3.2.31
|
3
|
3.0
|
24 March 2013
|
12.1
|
Frodo
|
|
3.0.6
|
15 June 2013
|
12.1
|
|
3.2
|
13 September 2013
|
12.2
|
3.10
|
3.2.4
|
28 November 2013
|
12.2
|
3.10.20
|
4
|
4.0
|
5 May 2014
|
13.0
|
Gotham
|
3.14
|
4.0.7
|
9 July 2014
|
13.1
|
3.14.11
[14]
|
4.2
|
26 September 2014
|
13.2
|
3.16
[15]
|
5
|
5.0
|
28 December 2014
|
14.0
|
Helix
|
3.17
[16]
|
5.0.7
|
29 March 2015
|
14.2
|
3.17
[17]
|
6
|
6.0
|
1 November 2015
|
15.2
|
Isengard
|
4.1
[18]
|
6.0.3
|
1 March 2016
|
15.2
|
4.1
[19]
|
7
|
7.0
|
29 December 2016
|
16.1
|
Jarvis
|
4.4
[20]
|
7.0.1
|
12 January 2017
|
16.1
|
4.4
[21]
|
8
|
8.0
|
9 April 2017
|
17.1
|
Krypton
|
4.9
[22]
|
Systems
[
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]
On 5 February 2013, OpenELEC announced that they had jointly developed, with
Arctic
, a manufacturer of
computer cooling
systems based in
Switzerland
, a passively cooled entertainment system ? the MC001 media centre, based on the Kodi 12 (OpenELEC 3.0) platform. They also announced plans to provide further builds for the ARCTIC MC001 systems on their next release.
[23]
Pulse-Eight
sells both custom and off the shelf hardware products primarily designed for Kodi, such as remote controls,
HTPC
systems and accessories, including a HTPC PVR set-top-box pre-installed with Kodi that they call "
PulseBox
"
[24]
Pulse-Eight also offers free performance tuned embedded versions of Kodi that they call
Pulse,
which is based on OpenELEC and a custom PVR-build of Kodi meant to run on dedicated HTPC systems.
[25]
Xtreamer
Ultra and Xtreamer Ultra 2, manufactured by the South Korean company Unicorn Information Systems, are nettops based on
Nvidia
graphics and
Intel Atom
processors and pre-installed OpenELEC and Kodi software. The first-generation Xtreamer Ultra uses Nvidia Ion chipset with a 1.80 GHz Dual-Core Intel Atom D525 CPU, while the Xtreamer Ultra 2 uses discrete
GeForce GT 520M
graphics with a 2.13 GHz Dual-Core Intel Atom D2700 CPU.
[26]
[27]
Receptions
[
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]
Dedoimedo reviewed openELEC in 2014:
[28]
If you think your investment in the Pi and openELEC is worth the difference in price toward a fully featured smart TV or a home media center, then you should definitely spend more time tweaking and taming this little box. As far as XBMC goes, it surely shows a lot of potential, and I'm rather pleased with openELEC. Surprised and delighted. Except the setup, which is bollocks.
Nathan Willis from
LWN.net
wrote review of OpenELEC 5 in 2015:
[29]
OpenELEC has done a good job of making setup and configuration painless, which is certainly critical. But its primary competition these days is the array of cheap, streaming-only set-top boxes from Roku, Amazon, and the like, all of which deliver on ease-of-use and on ease-of-finding content. For an open-source project like Kodi to compete with the commercial products, it will probably have to simplify the process of finding and setting up add-ons. OpenELEC 5 brings Kodi closer than ever to being a plug-and-play product, but it is not quite foolproof yet.
One of
DistroWatch
Weekly editors, Jesse Smith, wrote in review of OpenELEC 5.0.8 in 2015:
[30]
Simply put, OpenELEC makes for a very good appliance-style operating system. It turns the host computer into an easy to use multimedia centre, the interface is easy to navigate and yet the distribution remains fairly flexible in both its appearance and function. If you're looking for an inexpensive media centre that is easier than the typical Linux distribution set up, then OpenELEC is definitely an option I would recommend trying.
See also
[
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]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Raue, Stephan.
"OpenELEC Mediacenter - [Stable] OpenELEC 8.0.4 released"
.
openelec.tv
. Archived from
the original
on 7 August 2017
. Retrieved
7 August
2017
.
- ^
a
b
"OpenELEC Is a Fast-Booting, Self-Updating Version of XBMC for Home Theater PCs"
. Lifehacker. 20 October 2011
. Retrieved
20 November
2011
.
- ^
a
b
"XBMC-Focused OpenELEC 1.0 Released"
. Phoronix.com. 20 October 2011
. Retrieved
20 November
2011
.
- ^
a
b
OpenELEC 1.0 released 26 October 2011 natethomas (26 October 2011).
"OpenELEC 1.0 released"
. Xbmc.org. Archived from
the original
on 15 November 2011
. Retrieved
20 November
2011
.
{{
cite web
}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link
)
- ^
a
b
http://www.openelec.tv
Archived
22 October 2019 at the
Wayback Machine
OpenELEC.tv Official Website
- ^
a
b
"OpenELEC Media Center Software on Launchpad"
. 18 March 2009.
- ^
Building and Installing OpenELEC for Raspberry Pi openelec.tv
Archived
20 August 2013 at the
Wayback Machine
"Raspberry Pi lands MPEG-2 and VC-1 decoding through personal licenses, H.264 encoding and CEC tag along"
. engadget.com. 26 August 2012.
.
Raue, Stephan (28 December 2014).
"OpenELEC Mediacenter - OpenELEC 5.0 released"
.
openelec.tv
. Archived from
the original
on 7 January 2018
. Retrieved
19 May
2016
.
- ^
"OpenELEC 4 offers simple XBMC install for standalone devices"
. betanews.com. 5 May 2014.
.
- ^
OpenELEC 4.0 released
, 10 June 2014, archived from
the original
on 8 August 2016
, retrieved
6 May
2014
- ^
"About LibreELEC.tv"
.
libreelec.tv
. 2016
. Retrieved
12 May
2016
.
- ^
"Forks"
.
LibreELEC.wiki
. 16 November 2020
. Retrieved
4 March
2023
.
- ^
"LibreELEC.tv"
.
GitHub
. Retrieved
12 May
2016
.
- ^
Thursday, 20 October 2011 04:18 (20 October 2011).
"OpenELEC 1.0 Released"
. Openelec.tv. Archived from
the original
on 10 November 2011
. Retrieved
20 November
2011
.
{{
cite web
}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link
)
- ^
"OpenELEC 4.0.7 released"
. openelec.tv. 9 July 2014. Archived from
the original
on 7 August 2017
. Retrieved
11 July
2014
.
.
- ^
"OpenELEC 4.2.0 released"
. openelec.tv. 26 September 2014. Archived from
the original
on 7 August 2017
. Retrieved
28 September
2014
.
.
- ^
"OpenELEC 5.0 released"
. openelec.tv. 28 October 2014. Archived from
the original
on 7 January 2018
. Retrieved
29 December
2014
.
.
- ^
"OpenELEC 5.0.7 Released"
. openelec.tv. 29 March 2015. Archived from
the original
on 7 August 2017
. Retrieved
3 November
2015
.
.
- ^
"OpenELEC 6.0 released"
. openelec.tv. 7 May 2015. Archived from
the original
on 29 January 2018
. Retrieved
2 November
2015
.
.
- ^
"[UPDATE] [Release] OpenELEC 6.0.2 and 6.0.3 released"
. openelec.tv. 1 March 2016. Archived from
the original
on 5 January 2018
. Retrieved
12 March
2016
.
.
- ^
"[Stable] OpenELEC 7.0.0 released"
. openelec.tv. 29 December 2016. Archived from
the original
on 30 December 2016
. Retrieved
29 December
2016
.
.
- ^
"[Stable] OpenELEC 7.0.1 released"
. openelec.tv. 12 January 2017. Archived from
the original
on 13 January 2017
. Retrieved
12 January
2017
.
.
- ^
"[Stable] OpenELEC 8.0 released"
. OpenELEC. 9 April 2017. Archived from
the original
on 7 August 2017
. Retrieved
28 April
2017
.
.
- ^
"ARCTIC announces passive cooled Systems with OpenELEC installed"
. openelec.tv. 5 February 2013. Archived from
the original
on 8 February 2013
. Retrieved
8 February
2013
.
"ARCTIC MC001 Fanless low cost HTPC"
. forum.xbmc.org. 6 February 2013
. Retrieved
8 February
2013
.
"Arctic Introduces OpenELEC-based MC001-XBMC HTPC"
. www.anandtech.com. 5 February 2013
. Retrieved
8 February
2013
.
"ARCTIC MC001-XBMC Media Center Now Available w/ XBMC 12"
. legitreviews.com. 6 February 2013
. Retrieved
8 February
2013
.
"ARCTIC Bundles OpenELEC with Lower Priced MC001-XBMC"
. www.missingremote.com. 5 February 2013. Archived from
the original
on 9 February 2013
. Retrieved
8 February
2013
.
- ^
"PulseBox out 10th October"
. Blog.pulse-eight.com. 22 September 2011. Archived from
the original
on 1 October 2011
. Retrieved
17 October
2011
.
- ^
http://packages.pulse-eight.net
Pulse-Eight Packages
- ^
"XBMC-based embedded Linux distro debuts on HTPC mini-PC"
. Desktoplinux.com. 21 October 2011
. Retrieved
20 November
2011
.
- ^
XBMC-based embedded Linux distro debuts on HTPC mini-PC ? News ? Linux for Devices
. Archive.is (21 October 2011). Retrieved on 2013-07-24.
- ^
openELEC (XBMC) review - Now you're talking!
,
Dedoimedo
- ^
A look at OpenELEC 5 [LWN.net]
- ^
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 625, 31 August 2015
External links
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]