A stable version of this distro has been released

Dec 29, 2014 13:31 GMT  ·  By

OpenELEC is a bleeding-edge embedded operating system built specifically to run the Kodi media player hub. It has just been upgraded to use the latest version of Kodi and it packs a ton of improvements.

Developers tend to use the term bleeding edge a lot, even when it's not actually that kind of software or Linux distribution. OpenELEC devs never say that they have a bleeding-edge operating system, but a single look at their packages is all it takes to see this is the kind of distro they have.

The OpenELEC project follows Kodi (ex-XBMC) very closely and the devs usually make a release soon after any version of the media hub is made available, so it's not really a surprise that this latest iteration of the OS is out, so soon after Kodi 14.0.

OpenELEC 5.0 can run on basically anything

OpenELEC is basically an operating system that can turn any kind of PC into a media center, with little regard to the hardware present. In fact, it's powerful enough to run from a Raspberry Pi and those are not the most powerful devices out there. The fact that it usually sports the latest kernel also helps a lot because that ensures it can run even on just-released hardware.

"The headline change is the update from XBMC 13 (Gotham) to Kodi 14 (Helix) and the big switch from XBMC to Kodi branding. Both project teams have conducted a major find/replace but if you spot residual mentions of XBMC anywhere please let us know. The name change affects more than the GUI; all references in code have been changed and in the OpenELEC filesystem /storage/.xbmc will be recreated as a symlink to /storage/.kodi to ensure hardcoded paths in addons or scripts continue to work."

"Other notable “under the hood” changes include a version bump from v3.16 to v3.17 Linux kernel, and a switch from OpenSSL to LibreSSL following the heartbleed disclosure," the devs wrote.

It's also worth noting that that some of the add-ons are likely not to work for a while, at least not until the original developers upgrade them as well. That was to be expected, so it's not really a surprise. If you already have a previous version installed, just hit the update button. You don't need to install it all over again.

More details about the changes and improvements can be found in the official announcement. You can download the latest OpenELEC 5.0 right now from Softpedia.

OpenELEC (9 Images)

OpenELEC 5.0 main menu
Help menu in OpenELEC 5.0Video add-ons in OpenELEC 5.0
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