[KaoMac]

Hello,

I got my hand on a NUC with celeron (previous generation).

I plan to make it a media center with XBMC in replacement to my raspberryPi (with xbian).
I would use it as :

• media center
  
• steam machine
  
• retro gaming machine (with retroarch)
  

I read a few things on line but i don't know which distro to use. I believe there is three choices:

• openelec
  
• kodibuntu
  
• classic desktop distro with some configuration (i would go with opensuse then as i'm used to it)
  

Could all three fullfill my needs? wwhat are the down and upside of them?
Should i consider windows 8/10 or Android too?

Subsiduary question what's the easy way to use a remote with a NUC CEC or IR receiver?

[noggin]

OpenElec is best solution for Media Center IMHO - but won't give you Steam, though I think there are Retro plugins?

As that doesn't fit your needs I'd probably go either with Kodibuntu if you want to stay mainline, or Ubuntu with fritsch and co's development branches as detailed in the thread here : http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=165707

Both should have decent levels of Kodi support, particularly when it comes to GPU stuff. (fritsch and his colleagues have been doing amazing stuff recently to get rid of levelspace banding issues, and improve scaling quality by making the rendering process a lot more efficient on lower-end Intel GPUs. They are real heroes for Kodi on Intel - and deserve a huge amount of thanks from the community for their massive amounts of hard work on cracking really quite tricky problems, and persisting in working with Intel to solve some quite major problems)

[MSIC]

I'd agree - best stick to some variant of a regular Linux distro (an Ubuntu will be fine, eg KodiBuntu which i must admit i havent used that version), and then programs as you need them.
IE A #Buntu Linux distro, and install Kodi, and Steam, and and emulators as you need.

SteamOS is cool, but is designed to be self-contained rather than allowing access to the Linux distro underneath (in fact, i dont know if its even possible)
OpenELEC even more so - it just boots to Kodi, as an entirely self-contained system.

I suppose that you could dual-boot, I know that in the early Alpha-days of SteamOS you couldnt do it, but i think you can now... still, it wouldnt be my choice.

Finally, i assume that you know already that most (All?) Intel NUC's dont have CEC controlllers - at least, that was true when i last investigated a few months ago. You can purchase a device that you can add (https://www.pulse-eight.com/p/154/intel-...ec-adapter) but i have no personal experience of this.
Would you consider just using a smartphone or tablet instead? There are a number of free remote apps, though my long-term preference for the past 2 years is Yatse - there is a great free version, and if you get on with it, then the few dollars is well worth giving to the dev for a full version.

[noggin]

Note that internal CEC controllers for the Intel NUCs only work for some models. The internal header they connect to is no longer populated on newer models.

[Ned Scott]

There's an internal adapter header for CEC in the NUC for all models except the Celeron 2820 one. That's the only one that requires the external USB CEC adapter, which ironically is the most popular model for Kodi usage.

[noggin]

There's an internal adapter header for CEC in the NUC for all models except the Celeron 2820 one. That's the only one that requires the external USB CEC adapter, which ironically is the most popular model for Kodi usage.

I thought the new Broadwell NUCs didn't have the header populated Ned, and people were having to solder on their own headers?
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid1983754

[Ned Scott]

Yeah, but it's at least there in some form. With the 2820 you don't even have that option.