2016-08-21, 02:27
EDIT: Figured out a solution, sort of (see last paragraph), but I'm leaving this post up because there are some definite issues with certain versions of Kodi and certain versions of Ubuntu, maybe only on certain types of hardware. And with the stupid Ubuntu update that just went out I have a feeling more people are going to be falling into this trap.
The short question: Is there a Linux distro OTHER THAN UBUNTU (or an alternate version of Ubuntu) that has a desktop and that Kodi works really well with? Because honestly, I am totally fed up with Ubuntu right now. I specify "has a desktop" because otherwise people might suggest OpenElec, and I don't want that, but it can be a pretty minimal desktop.
Here is the background: I was trying to help someone with a problem today. He has an MSI Cubi and has been using Kodi Isengard under Ubuntu 14.04 and it has always run great. Unfortunately the Ubuntu people, in their infinite wisdom, decided to try to induce users into either upgrading to Ubuntu 16.04 or updating the kernel. I am not a Linux expert but this is the page they are sending people to: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/1404_HWE_EOL
They give you an easy, one click install button that upgrades the kernel. Unfortunately, on that particular box it also destroyed the video and audio coming from Kodi. I didn't actually see what it was doing but I guess it was pretty bad. So since he couldn't figure out how to fix it he decided to try upgrading to Ubuntu 16.04. Well he did that and then he installed the version of Kodi offered in their software center or whatever they call it; it was branded as both Kodi and Debian and was an older version because it used the Confluence skin. Anyway it looked like it was going to work until he tried to play audio. Turns out that Ubuntu 16.04 seriously breaks the audio on the Cubi, even if you are not in Kodi. Even if you go to the audio settings and do a test, the audio plays vvvveeeerrrryyyy sssslllloooowwwwllllyyyy. In Kodi it lagged way behind the video (the video itself was fine). We tried following the instructions of a Ubuntu page in an attempt to fix the audio and somehow wound up getting Kodi into a state where it could not play audio at all, in fact it displayed a speaker icon with a red X in the upper right corner all the time.
So, looking at that page at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/1404_HWE_EOL and reading some of the comments on the Ubuntu Forum, we decided to try going back to one of the earliest releases of Ubuntu 14.04, which apparently does not have the early End-Of-Life issue (if nothing about that makes sense to you, it doesn't to me either, but that's what that page says). So we installed Ubuntu 14.04. But then we had a problem because we didn't want to use Jarvis because of PVR addon issues. We had older .deb files of Kodi, specifically kodi-bin_15.2~git20151019.1039-final-0trusty_amd64.deb and kodi_15.2~git20151019.1039-final-0trusty_all.deb, and we tried installing those, first using dpkg -i and then when that didn't work, we tried Gdebi. The kodi-bin file appeared to install fine but the other one would not, due to some unmet dependency. As I mentioned above, I am not a LInux expert, and I have no idea what to do when an install fails due to an unmet dependency (supposedly Gdebi can deal with those, but apparently not this time). So we used Synaptic to clean out the remnants of those installs and proceeded with plan B, which was to install the latest nightly version. And in that we were successful, and when it works it works great - both the video and audio are perfect.
BUT - about 95% of the time, it crashes at startup! If we keep retrying, eventually it will start, but it is very ridiculous how many times you have to keep trying. I suspect it has to do with the TVHeadEnd PVR addon, because it didn't really crash at all until we enabled that (note there were NO other addons enabled at that point; we had installed the Titan skin which he likes, but went back to the new default skin because we thought Titan might be causing the crashes). Unfortunately the main reason we are running Kodi is to use it as a frontend for TVHeadEnd, so not using that PVR addon isn't really an option.
I don't have direct access to that system (so I probably can't answer too many questions), but the guy who owns it is pretty upset right now, I think mostly with the Ubuntu people for breaking his perfectly working system with their upgrade. There is something about the 16.04 kernel that they sent out (even to 14.04 users, apparently) that just doesn't seem to work well with the Cubi. Neither one of us are really familiar with Linux; we just use it because up until now it has been an easy and inexpensive way to run Kodi on a small HTPC system. And I know of two other systems that have had that same update with no apparent issues, but they have different hardware.
But having said that, I also personally run Kodi Isengard under Ubuntu 14.04 (I did install the update) and Kodi does crash on my system rather frequently at startup, both now and prior to the update, but I think three times is the maximum number of times I've ever had to restart it, so it's never bothered me enough to want to change to something else. And I am also using the TVHeadEnd PVR addon. My suspicion is that it's some kind of interaction between Ubuntu, Kodi, and the PVR addon, but I can't be sure.
Now, honestly, I don't like using a nightly, because I KNOW it can have bugs. That's what nightlies are for, not for people like us that just want a reliable system. But unless someone can explain to me how to install Isengard on Ubuntu 14.04 without running into dependency issues (and we'd be VERY appreciative if someone could, since it was very reliable on that system prior to that Ubuntu update), I don't know what to do. And in the back of my mind I keep thinking that Ubuntu is most of the reason we are having these issues. So, let's say you're dead set against using Ubuntu, or anything based on Ubuntu (so no Linux Mint, etc.) but you do want at least a minimal desktop - is there a distro choice that seems to work well for nearly every Kodi user that's tried it?
This just all seems like an incredible run of bad luck to me, it's like no matter what we tried, it fixed one problem but caused another.
Were it not for the crashes at startup, the current system (Krypton + Ubuntu 14.04) would be great.
EDIT: We found the kodi-old-stable PPA at https://launchpad.net/~team-xbmc/+archiv...u/kodi-old and removed the nightly version and installed from that, now everything seems to be working as it did before. But, we are back on Isengard. I hope the final release version of Krypton works a little better, otherwise that system may never get upgraded past Ubuntu 14.04 and Isengard!
The short question: Is there a Linux distro OTHER THAN UBUNTU (or an alternate version of Ubuntu) that has a desktop and that Kodi works really well with? Because honestly, I am totally fed up with Ubuntu right now. I specify "has a desktop" because otherwise people might suggest OpenElec, and I don't want that, but it can be a pretty minimal desktop.
Here is the background: I was trying to help someone with a problem today. He has an MSI Cubi and has been using Kodi Isengard under Ubuntu 14.04 and it has always run great. Unfortunately the Ubuntu people, in their infinite wisdom, decided to try to induce users into either upgrading to Ubuntu 16.04 or updating the kernel. I am not a Linux expert but this is the page they are sending people to: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/1404_HWE_EOL
They give you an easy, one click install button that upgrades the kernel. Unfortunately, on that particular box it also destroyed the video and audio coming from Kodi. I didn't actually see what it was doing but I guess it was pretty bad. So since he couldn't figure out how to fix it he decided to try upgrading to Ubuntu 16.04. Well he did that and then he installed the version of Kodi offered in their software center or whatever they call it; it was branded as both Kodi and Debian and was an older version because it used the Confluence skin. Anyway it looked like it was going to work until he tried to play audio. Turns out that Ubuntu 16.04 seriously breaks the audio on the Cubi, even if you are not in Kodi. Even if you go to the audio settings and do a test, the audio plays vvvveeeerrrryyyy sssslllloooowwwwllllyyyy. In Kodi it lagged way behind the video (the video itself was fine). We tried following the instructions of a Ubuntu page in an attempt to fix the audio and somehow wound up getting Kodi into a state where it could not play audio at all, in fact it displayed a speaker icon with a red X in the upper right corner all the time.
So, looking at that page at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/1404_HWE_EOL and reading some of the comments on the Ubuntu Forum, we decided to try going back to one of the earliest releases of Ubuntu 14.04, which apparently does not have the early End-Of-Life issue (if nothing about that makes sense to you, it doesn't to me either, but that's what that page says). So we installed Ubuntu 14.04. But then we had a problem because we didn't want to use Jarvis because of PVR addon issues. We had older .deb files of Kodi, specifically kodi-bin_15.2~git20151019.1039-final-0trusty_amd64.deb and kodi_15.2~git20151019.1039-final-0trusty_all.deb, and we tried installing those, first using dpkg -i and then when that didn't work, we tried Gdebi. The kodi-bin file appeared to install fine but the other one would not, due to some unmet dependency. As I mentioned above, I am not a LInux expert, and I have no idea what to do when an install fails due to an unmet dependency (supposedly Gdebi can deal with those, but apparently not this time). So we used Synaptic to clean out the remnants of those installs and proceeded with plan B, which was to install the latest nightly version. And in that we were successful, and when it works it works great - both the video and audio are perfect.
BUT - about 95% of the time, it crashes at startup! If we keep retrying, eventually it will start, but it is very ridiculous how many times you have to keep trying. I suspect it has to do with the TVHeadEnd PVR addon, because it didn't really crash at all until we enabled that (note there were NO other addons enabled at that point; we had installed the Titan skin which he likes, but went back to the new default skin because we thought Titan might be causing the crashes). Unfortunately the main reason we are running Kodi is to use it as a frontend for TVHeadEnd, so not using that PVR addon isn't really an option.
I don't have direct access to that system (so I probably can't answer too many questions), but the guy who owns it is pretty upset right now, I think mostly with the Ubuntu people for breaking his perfectly working system with their upgrade. There is something about the 16.04 kernel that they sent out (even to 14.04 users, apparently) that just doesn't seem to work well with the Cubi. Neither one of us are really familiar with Linux; we just use it because up until now it has been an easy and inexpensive way to run Kodi on a small HTPC system. And I know of two other systems that have had that same update with no apparent issues, but they have different hardware.
But having said that, I also personally run Kodi Isengard under Ubuntu 14.04 (I did install the update) and Kodi does crash on my system rather frequently at startup, both now and prior to the update, but I think three times is the maximum number of times I've ever had to restart it, so it's never bothered me enough to want to change to something else. And I am also using the TVHeadEnd PVR addon. My suspicion is that it's some kind of interaction between Ubuntu, Kodi, and the PVR addon, but I can't be sure.
Now, honestly, I don't like using a nightly, because I KNOW it can have bugs. That's what nightlies are for, not for people like us that just want a reliable system. But unless someone can explain to me how to install Isengard on Ubuntu 14.04 without running into dependency issues (and we'd be VERY appreciative if someone could, since it was very reliable on that system prior to that Ubuntu update), I don't know what to do. And in the back of my mind I keep thinking that Ubuntu is most of the reason we are having these issues. So, let's say you're dead set against using Ubuntu, or anything based on Ubuntu (so no Linux Mint, etc.) but you do want at least a minimal desktop - is there a distro choice that seems to work well for nearly every Kodi user that's tried it?
This just all seems like an incredible run of bad luck to me, it's like no matter what we tried, it fixed one problem but caused another.
Were it not for the crashes at startup, the current system (Krypton + Ubuntu 14.04) would be great.EDIT: We found the kodi-old-stable PPA at https://launchpad.net/~team-xbmc/+archiv...u/kodi-old and removed the nightly version and installed from that, now everything seems to be working as it did before. But, we are back on Isengard. I hope the final release version of Krypton works a little better, otherwise that system may never get upgraded past Ubuntu 14.04 and Isengard!