OpenELEC 1.0: fast-booting XBMC media centre OS

After more than two years of development, the OpenELEC Project has announced the arrival of version 1.0 of its embedded Linux operating system built to run the open source XBMC Media Center. OpenELEC – Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center – is a small Linux distribution that, unlike XBMC-Live or XBMCfreak, isn't based on Ubuntu or any other distribution, and is instead "built from scratch" to be "as streamlined as possible". According to the development team, full installations of OpenELEC take less than 5 minutes, need no Linux experience and usually only require 80 to 130 MB.

With the OpenELEC Configuration add-on for XBMC, users can configure a variety of settings
Source: www.openelec.tv OpenELEC 1.0 features version 10.1 of the XBMC Media Center, code-named "Dharma", and will fully boot in less than 10 seconds. Based on the 3.1 (RC10) Linux kernel, it includes X.org 1.10.4 and Mesa 7.11, and has a built-in self-update functionality that will automatically install the latest updates when connected to the internet.

Additional functionality has been added to XBMC by the OpenELEC developers to make it easier to use: an OpenELEC Configuration Add-on allows users to configure their networking settings, additional hardware and update services. Other add-ons are also available through the project's own repository. While it supports most standard 32- and 64-bit systems, specific builds are also available for Intel, NVIDIA ION and AMD Fusion-based systems among others.

More details about the first stable release can be found in the official release announcement. OpenELEC 1.0 is available to download from the project's site and installation guides are provided. OpenELEC source code is hosted on GitHub and licensed under the GPL.

See also:

• GeeXboX Media Center distribution reaches 2.0, a report from The H.

(crve)