I have read a few articles on kodi on Armbian.

I am currently using RetrOrangePi as it is close to what i want.

What i want is:

A linux desktop - dont care which one

Kodi with h/w acceleration

 

RetrOranagePi does this but boots up into ES then you have to go to the desktop and currently i can't get kodo it run from desktop, so i have to go back into ES to run Kodi and i think (not sure) i can't update the os.

 

so can i get the RetrOrangePi working kodi on an Armbian os?

 

cheers

 

 

There is Kodi in RetrOrangePi, but it is not h/w accelerated and is almost useful. You can try it by starting it from emulation GUI. It was latest Kodi 17 Krypton, last time i checked. If you think it's good for you (for sd contents and music, for example), you can start it from Desktop too and optionally, disable ES script to boot at start up.

What you start from ES is OpenElec, it is on separate partition (i think) and is not part of Amrbian (Desktop), behind RetrOrangePi. There may be a way to build the same h/w accelerated Kodi, from @jernej OpenElec, used Cedarx. But i can't do it and seems like no body is interested of this anyway. You can try something like this, described here - OrangePi: Installing OpenELEC chroot into Armbian.

And - yes, it's not a good idea to upgrade anything in RetrOrangePi. I can confirm that this will break at least OpenElec.

I tested this here, is some Russian page, his image works if you use orange pi only for kodi, i wanted it with the desktop. I use a heats-sink on the cpu.

http://ua3nbw.ru/all/sborka-videopleera-mpv-with-hardware-decoding/

 

Page is a bit difficult to read because goole translates from Russian.  

I am not tested this yet, but there is some development of this above, with some issues fixed - Scripts for launching an external players .

If someone has enough time to look into it, he should do it. I think this guy will keep on anyway, unfortunately he speaks Russian. I my native language is German.  

I don't have real need for kodi 18 and hardware  acceleratean.  I only did think it would make more sense to have the latest version of kodi with h/w acceleration.  For me the kodi 15 on orange pi is all i need so far.  Don't use it realy much but since i have this board i gave it a try.  Had problems getting the IR control working but i fixed it.

 

4 hours ago, Johann Pascher said:

If someone has enough time to look into it, he should do it. I think this guy will keep on anyway, unfortunately he speaks Russian. I my native language is German.

 

Well, fortunately for me, i kind of understand Russian :), there is a lot useful info in this language anyway. I tried this guys previous project of Kodi 17 and it worked very well, but without h/w video acceleration. For Kodi only, the most useful for now is @jernej OpenElec. I tried IR there and it worked fine. Everything needed for IR is already in the image and is well explained - [FAQ] Openelec OPi for beginners. But if you need the whole Linux OS plus useful Kodi, there is no easy solution for now. Maybe this Kodi 18 with external player, or maybe this - OrangePi: Installing OpenELEC chroot into Armbian. This is what i am going to test these days if i find free time.