[slingshot27]

Hello,

I want to use my Raspberry Pi for XBMC.
I see there are three distro's which should be used: OpenELEC, Rasbmc and XBian.
Is there some kind of summary with difference between these distro's. Which one can be best used?

I also would like to browse the internet with the Raspberry Pi. Is this possible when using the distro's mentioned above?

Thanks for your help!

[andrego]

OpenELEC is focused on keeping everything as streamlined and simple as possible so you can focus on enjoying your media. It is a minimal build that includes everything you need (but nothing more) for a great XBMC experience. It's roughly an 80MB download and fits on even the smallest sdcard.

This has advantages and disadvantages depending on your needs. It boots insanely fast, but your options to install other programs are limited. If all you want is XBMC, choosing OpenELEC is a no-brainer. It's simple to install, use, and maintain. E.x. Upgrading is as easy as copying 4 files to a single SBM share and rebooting.

If you want more than XBMC, it may not be your ideal choice. While there are addons for some programs - you can install rsync, nano (command line text editor), and transmission (bittorrent client) for example - the options to add external programs are limited unless you build your own addons.

XBian / RaspBMC are largely very similar to each other. Both based on the Raspbian (Debian compiled for RPi) distribution. It's a full-blown Linux distro including all the bells and whistles like a development toolchain, desktop, etc. Anything you can install in Debian, you can likely install in XBian or RaspBMC too. E.x. videogames like Quake3, console emulators (snes9x, etc).

If you want to have a full-fledged Linux desktop and other apps besides XBMC, these two may be a better choice. XBian seems slightly faster. RaspBMC may be slightly easier to upgrade. I can't say one or the other is better; they both work great. But due to their nature, they're slower to boot and a bit more manual to update. Updating the base system is done with apt-get update && apt-get upgrade. Updating XBMC varies - both distributions have their own custom update systems for XBMC.

Personally, I just needed a media center and OpenELEC is 'best of breed' in that regard so it's all I use now. But I'm not everyone, and lots of people have different needs, which is why the other two are also popular. Just depends what you're looking for.

[slingshot27]

thanks for your large answer, it helps a lot.
I want to use the mySql database on my NAS and thumbnails folder on my NAS like I use for xbmc on my pc. is this possible? for the pc I have to place a advancedsettings.xml and it works. do these distribution support this?

[iwlf]

Has anybody successfully added full X + LXDE to raspbmc lately.
For me apt-get install xorg and startx (after stopping xbmc) brought no X Desktop to the TV
and after apt-get install lxde xbmc doesn't come up at boot anymore but trys again and again.
Also the shell (by ssh) seems not to have the language I set and has no colors and so on.
Or does this work with XBIAN for somebody?
I now have installed latest raspbian and added XBMC Package from:
http://michael.gorven.za.net/content/xbmc-raspberry-pi
Which seems to work in general but not the fastest got no airplay up to now,
YouTube Login issues, not the latest kernel and so on.
I hope xbmc is cleanly integrated as package in raspbian some day,
with optimized kernel package to choose ...
I don't think you have to remove services for fast XBMC Linux has priorities
and real time kernel for years, there should be a more propper approach.

[iwlf]

I just installed the latest 21.12.2012 2.95.6 OpenElec XBMC Image from (Scroll to bottom)

http://46.38.241.69/sparky0815-rpi/

http://sparky0815.de/openelec-download-i...fat-files/

And it is fare more responsive then the rest (use it for 5 Minutes)
it also seems to be more stable and well working than the others.

As fare I can after 5 Minutes I recommend it as a XBMC Only System.

I think I will rather buy some more Pis for the other purposes
not multi tasking but Multi pis is the better option I think.

On the screen there is also a message that a 3.x.6 Beta is available
but havent found images yet.

Oh I forgot these Images was German from start I don't if this automatic or preset.

Some issues also Youtube Login, some script errors, no real fastforward in some services, ...

[doveman2]

XBian / RaspBMC are largely very similar to each other. Both based on the Raspbian (Debian compiled for RPi) distribution. It's a full-blown Linux distro including all the bells and whistles like a development toolchain, desktop, etc. Anything you can install in Debian, you can likely install in XBian or RaspBMC too. E.x. videogames like Quake3, console emulators (snes9x, etc).

If you want to have a full-fledged Linux desktop and other apps besides XBMC, these two may be a better choice. XBian seems slightly faster. RaspBMC may be slightly easier to upgrade. I can't say one or the other is better; they both work great. But due to their nature, they're slower to boot and a bit more manual to update. Updating the base system is done with apt-get update && apt-get upgrade. Updating XBMC varies - both distributions have their own custom update systems for XBMC.

Personally, I just needed a media center and OpenELEC is 'best of breed' in that regard so it's all I use now. But I'm not everyone, and lots of people have different needs, which is why the other two are also popular. Just depends what you're looking for.

I don't think Raspbmc give you a "full-fledged Linux desktop". I don't think it even has a X server. I'm not sure how cut down it is compared to XBian or OpenElec, probably somewhere in between.

[tredman]

I've tried all 3 over the weekend.

Raspbmc overclocked and installed to USB offers the fastest & smoothest experience.

Had no lockups or crashes on openelec and Raspbmc and would recommend both.

[doveman2]

I've tried all 3 over the weekend.

Raspbmc overclocked and installed to USB offers the fastest & smoothest experience.

Had no lockups or crashes on openelec and Raspbmc and would recommend both.

Did you try OpenElec overclocked and installed to USB as well?

I've been mainly using Raspbmc and have found it a bit laggy, even overclocked to Fast and running from the USB. I've also found it sends the CPU to 85% (measured with top) just sitting on the Home screen with addon shortcuts showing, or when in the right-hand pane of settings, so I'm going to see if it's the same with OpenElec.

I haven't managed to get my DVB-T tuner working with either yet, even though others with the exact same model have. Raspbmc didn't recognise my WiFi adapter either, even though dmesg showed it. I haven't tested that with OpenElec yet.

[tredman]

Had same high CPU on all platforms tbh, doesn't really bother me as long as menus are snappy.

Tried openelec overclocked, but not on USB (was looking for a newb method for a friend and formatting to ext4 and hand editing files via ssh ain't going to cut it) - I do like the raspbmc settings addon and the ease it gives you for overclock etc.

There wasn't much in it between them (poss cos I run a SQL library so no scanning was required), but the settings plugin and the fact I could use fanart meant raspbmc won for me.

[doveman2]

OK. I'll probably use a SQL library as well. I don't know what the serifs plugin is but if I can't use fanart on OpenElec I think that would rule it out for me.

I swapped the tuner out for a spare identical one I had and raspbmc is working with that now. The other one works fine on my PC so I can't imagine why it doesn't on the Pi!

[tredman]

Stupid iphone corrected 'settings plugin' to 'serifs plugin'

There does seem to be a certain amount of 'it just works' or not with a Pi unexplainedly - I have 2 identical sd cards, one causes errors all over the shop the other is spot on.

[Dnk8n]

[RASBMC]: I found that setting up Raspbmc exactly how they reccommend without changing any settings, resulted in a good user experience, playing most of my videos (the ones which did not work had lip sync issues which got worse with time).

[OpenELEC]: I used the latest image from http://openelec.thestateofme.com/ and left all settings as is. It resulted in pretty much the same user experience (even with the RSS feed going). But it surprised me by playing every one of my videos (even the ones which did not work in RaspBMC)

So for a newbie user, openelec works better out of the box. Apparently Raspbmc has neat overclocking tools but it is also possible to overclock openelec (through ssh). One thing I really like about openelec is the way it shares everything over the home network (using samba I think). It was a bit of a hassle for me to get the contents of my external hdd shared using Rasbmc.

I have one quick question, are there advantages in compiling OpenELEC the long and complicated way? Or do I get exactly the same result by using an image from the link I included before?

My next aim is to get OpenELEC running on a usb as mentioned earlier in this thread. Is it a similar process to the way you'd do it with RaspBMC?

[popcornmix]

I have one quick question, are there advantages in compiling OpenELEC the long and complicated way? Or do I get exactly the same result by using an image from the link I included before?

Building yourself means you may get fixes half a day earlier. You have the option of editing code yourself, or applying patches that have not been accepted yet.
But that's pretty specialised stuff and 99% of people should just download a precompiled image.