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Milhouse
Retired Team-Kodi Member
Posts: 17,855
2016-12-10, 07:15
(This post was last modified: 2016-12-10, 07:25 by Milhouse.)
Yes, latest firmware should work with older kernel and userland, but older firmware may not work so well with newer kernel/userland. I don't know what causes the Berryboot firmware to update, but it's easy to see that if not careful firmware and kernel and userland can/will get out of sync, which may result in unpredictable results. We take special care to ensure that LibreELEC ships with matched kernel/firmware/userland, and with Berryboot that isn't what the end user is getting.
The thing is, I know that LibreELEC adds new and updated overlays (dbto) with each new release, so if a Berryboot user updates to a new LE version they might try (or we might ask them) to enable an overlay that isn't present because Berryboot only provides a smaller subset of older overlays. Or the compiler/kernel we've used in a new build doesn't work so well with the Berryboot overlays that are based on an older kernel or compiler (eg. gcc-5.4 vs. gcc-6.2). We do see overlays updated in different kernel releases - fixing bugs, adding features - so running LE against an older kernel and/or overlay may reveal a bug that is already fixed in the version of the overlay shipped with LibreELEC, but not fixed in the Berryboot version, and then we have users complaining the issue is still there in LibreELEC.
With Berryboot, because we (LibreELEC) can't be certain what the user has installed on their system (what kernel? what config? what firmware? what overlays? who supplied them? how where they built?), it makes supporting such a system very difficult, if not impossible.
And this is my main concern, that by it's very nature Berryboot results in a system that is not the same as that released by LibreELEC, and this may result in unpredictable/unexplainable differences that are caused by Berryboot, but are blamed on LibreELEC. This is a support headache for us, as we are supplying an embedded system yet the Berryboot user is running a repackaged version that is not the same as the official version I or anyone else will have.
At the very least, Berryboot should not be shipping a version of LibreELEC that has been repackaged and is still marked as "official". When repackaging Berryboot, it should be very clear that it is no longer an "official" release by updating the release details in /etc/os-release, ie. setting LIBREELEC_BUILD="Berryboot", and replacing all references to "official" with "Berryboot" (including the filename).
I don't know how many users there are with Berryboot and LibreELEC so I'm not going to ask you to remove any support you may already have (if you do, that is your choice) however I don't think we (as in LibreELEC) can give support to Berryboot users with LibreELEC installations, and I simply wanted to make this very clear.
Texture Cache Maintenance Utility: Preload your texture cache for optimal UI performance. Remotely manage media libraries. Purge unused artwork to free up space. Find missing media. Configurable QA check to highlight metadata issues. Aid in diagnosis of library and cache related problems.
