Hi, I've been trying (not very hard) to see if I can get XBMC to install on the most minimalistic distro possible. First I tried to see if I could get it onto TinyCore. But it uses it's own package manager so I didn't want to bother. Then I moved to DSL but same deal.
Does anyone have an idea of what the best distro would be to use for this?
I don't want to use ubuntu. Ubuntu is ok, but I'm not a big fan of it. As someone I know once said "Ubuntu is Linux for babies". It's actually kinda true, it's is very easy to use, especially for those migrating from Windows. Which IS a good thing ultimately, just not for me.
Anyways, what I'm looking for is something that is BAREBONES as possible. Something that has a quick boot time.
Anyone have any ideas?
cbstryker Wrote:Hi, I've been trying (not very hard) to see if I can get XBMC to install on the most minimalistic distro possible. First I tried to see if I could get it onto TinyCore. But it uses it's own package manager so I didn't want to bother. Then I moved to DSL but same deal.
Does anyone have an idea of what the best distro would be to use for this?
I don't want to use ubuntu. Ubuntu is ok, but I'm not a big fan of it. As someone I know once said "Ubuntu is Linux for babies". It's actually kinda true, it's is very easy to use, especially for those migrating from Windows. Which IS a good thing ultimately, just not for me.
Anyways, what I'm looking for is something that is BAREBONES as possible. Something that has a quick boot time.
Anyone have any ideas?
Do you need a desktop of any sort? If not just go down the Ubuntu minimal route. It works great, simple choice really. Or is it being too simple an issue?
cbstryker Wrote:Hi, I've been trying (not very hard) to see if I can get XBMC to install on the most minimalistic distro possible.
i have do this very hard :-)
cbstryker Wrote:Does anyone have an idea of what the best distro would be to use for this?
the result you find on
http://www.openelec.tv. there is actually no official release, but you can checkout from launchpad and compile the complete distro
cbstryker Wrote:Anyways, what I'm looking for is something that is BAREBONES as possible. Something that has a quick boot time.
Anyone have any ideas?
is 50-70MB (depended of your hardware) for the complete distribution and boottimes of 10sec. ok for you (with nvidia graphic cards on an ION system around 20-25sec)?
topfs2 Wrote:uhm, why not xbmc live?
XBMC is ubuntu.
Anyways, yes I did want a desktop of some sort, preferably with something like LXDE with openbox. Just so that I can also do some browsing online. I want this setup to be a central entertainment unit for:
1. Media playback via XBMC
2. Online browsing capabilities (youtube, other sites)
That is my main goal.
I actually found this:
http://tinycorelinux.com/forum/index.php?topic=2977.0
I didn't realize it was that simple to build your own packages for TinyCore and it seems I should be able to manage this, and if I do, I'll definitely post the results.
topfs2 Wrote:uhm, why not xbmc live?
Sorry for the double post but my browser keeps crashing when I try to "Edit" my earlier post.
What I meant to say was that XBMC
Live is Ubuntu.
Quote:the result you find on http://www.openelec.tv. there is actually no official release, but you can checkout from launchpad and compile the complete distro
Maybe I am stupid and my german is bad, but I have spent sometime on your site and I cant even figure out what it is. I guess it is xbmc but smaller? What is the benefit from being smaller than xbmclive on a modern ion system?
I have used and tested the openelec.tv build on a few systems since before xmas. Benefits really are small, compact distro and quite quick to boot. Off the top of my head i think it was about 50mb or so. I have it alll setup on a sd card.
Quote:Does anyone have an idea of what the best distro would be to use for this?
To answer you question...perhaps arch linux is something for you? I dont know how small it is but it is doityourself and there seem to be a number of xbmc users on it,
vikjon0 Wrote:Maybe I am stupid and my german is bad, but I have spent sometime on your site and I cant even figure out what it is.
the goal was (and is) to have an very small distro, that can boot from flashcards (64MB can be enough at the moment). the system (openelec) is installed on this flashdrive and the Harddisk are only for content (Music, Videos...) and user settings. i am working also on arm support for the distro, so it is possible to use it on ARM Touchpads, settop boxes, and tv`s, with limited space on flash memory for system and an additional storage.
vikjon0 Wrote:I guess it is xbmc but smaller? What is the benefit from being smaller than xbmclive on a modern ion system?
openelec was originally not designed for only ION systems.
- an smaller system also boots faster
- only for xbmc needed services will start
- you can use an cheap, fast, small flashdrive (like DiskOnModules, CompactFlash, SD Cards, USB Sticks) without buying an SSD (for content you dont need an fast drive).
- you can install openelec on an big USB Stick with two partitions (one for system one for content, fill the content partition with music, videos, etc...) without loosing many many megabytes for the system and use this stick where you want.
Quote:the goal was (and is) to have an very small distro, that can boot from flashcards (64MB can be enough at the moment). the system (openelec) is installed on this flashdrive and the Harddisk are only for content (Music, Videos...) and user settings. i am working also on arm support for the distro, so it is possible to use it on ARM Touchpads, settop boxes, and tv`s, with limited space on flash memory for system and an additional storage.
Ok, I surrender
64mb xbmc does impress me! (still dont need sure I need it)
openelec.tv Wrote:the goal was (and is) to have an very small distro, that can boot from flashcards (64MB can be enough at the moment). the system (openelec) is installed on this flashdrive and the Harddisk are only for content (Music, Videos...) and user settings. i am working also on arm support for the distro, so it is possible to use it on ARM Touchpads, settop boxes, and tv`s, with limited space on flash memory for system and an additional storage.
So what is your distro based on? I'm assuming it's a striped version of XBMC-Live. Does it have any kind of desktop manager installed? And lastly, which repositories are you using?
Since you said you wanted to do it the hard way...
Gentoo embedded is the smalled footprint system I've used myself. With a custom kernel, uclibc, busybox and tinyx, you get working gui with a footprint well under 10Mb.
Of course, this system will not be able to run xbmc, but if you replace tinyx with a minimal xorg I think you'll be very close to running the smallest system possible.
I highly doubt that all xbmc's dependencies will compile against uclibc without tweaking though!
cbstryker Wrote:So what is your distro based on? I'm assuming it's a striped version of XBMC-Live. Does it have any kind of desktop manager installed? And lastly, which repositories are you using?
no its not an stripped down version of anything, it builds the complete distribution from scratch. you can download on launchpad an toolchain (an bunch of shellscripts). if you type "make" the toolchain dwnloads all sources and compiles the complete distribution (needs about 3-4 hours on my core2duo laptop). then you have an kernel and an squashfs image (system). now you must install any bootloader to your drive (grub, extlinux, syslinux) and setup the bootloader to boot this kernel and the squashfs image.
prebuild binarys that you can download on
http://www.openelec,tv contains the kernel and the squashfs file.
there is no desktopmanager installed, because it is designed to start directly in xbmc. but you can use this toolchain to integrate your own desktopmanager. (i am trying also to integrate an webbrowser, that can be used with xbmc)
JumJum Wrote:Since you said you wanted to do it the hard way...
Gentoo embedded is the smalled footprint system I've used myself. With a custom kernel, uclibc, busybox and tinyx, you get working gui with a footprint well under 10Mb.
Of course, this system will not be able to run xbmc, but if you replace tinyx with a minimal xorg I think you'll be very close to running the smallest system possible.
I highly doubt that all xbmc's dependencies will compile against uclibc without tweaking though!
openelec is without xbmc, but with full xorg (not tinyx) also around 10MB. i have used long time uClibc, i have also patches to let build xbmc against uclibc - but there are some issues i dont have with glibc. also nvidia binary drivers dont work with uclibc, because they are linked against glibc.