2013-01-09, 00:11
I got a Raspberry Pi, and wanted xbmc so I installed Raspbmc. However this is very slow. What version of xbmc is the best and fastest for my Raspberry Pi?? thanks.
(2013-01-11, 00:39)frumpsnake Wrote: This is my personal opinion of all three. As always, YMMV.Comparing Alpha's between stable's is not nice...
OpenELEC
Pros: By far the lightest and best performing distro in my experience. Runs well, even at stock. Seems to handle 1080p w/DTS decoding with a more modest overclock compared to the others IMO.
Cons: Not the easiest for non-Linux users to set up (Win/Mac requires non-official image & doesn't automatically resize partition to fill SD card). Needs tweaking -- some of the default settings are ridiculously conservative, like <imageres>256</imageres> making all posters look like crap. If you're that worried about memory usage it'd be better to reduce the fanart res or disable it entirely. Locked down for XBMC use -- limited additional software if you need to add drivers or addtitional Linux software, can't set up fstab mounts, etc.
Raspbmc
Pros: Easy to install and configure for novices. Sensible defaults, and easily allows tweaks like 1080p menus or USB installs. Debian-based, easy to add 3rd party software.
Cons: Not wanting to start a war, but menus and navigation has always been *considerably* slower w/Raspbmc for me, even at 720p and I'm not sure why. Raspbmc users will often blame the SD card (insisting you install on USB), clock speed, or various settings to fix it, despite the fact the other distros seem to be fine without them.
Xbian
Pros: Faster than Raspbmc. Close/on par with OpenELEC, Debian based, easy to add 3rd party software.
Cons: Overclocked out-of-the-box, which you might not agree with. But mainly I get the impression that the devs don't quite know what they're doing -- in the past they've accidentally voided warranties because they combined force_turbo and over_voltage without knowing what that meant, they completely hosed several updates, and even now the latest 1.0a4 does things like tweaking <thumbres> which has zero effect in Frodo. It might be a minor thing but I expect devs of an XBMC-based RPi distribution to know both the RPi and XBMC inside and out.
In short, none of them are perfect, but which you prefer will depend on your needs. You might disagree with me and find Raspbmc w/USB is your preferred. As doug said, it's really easy to switch between them all to find which you like best. Especially if you set up a MySQL server and don't need to populate the database every time, you can have your 3 SD cards and try them all out (or even update them periodically to see how progress is going.)
(2013-01-11, 00:39)frumpsnake Wrote: Cons: Overclocked out-of-the-box, which you might not agree with.
1.) But mainly I get the impression that the devs don't quite know what they're doing --
2.) in the past they've accidentally voided warranties because they combined force_turbo and over_voltage without knowing what that meant,
3.) they completely hosed several updates,
4.) and even now the latest 1.0a4 does things like tweaking <thumbres> which has zero effect in Frodo.
(2012-12-04, 00:01)jmarshall Wrote: Thanks - it was my fault the wiki was wrong (must look at code when documenting...)