Welcome to The Grok Shop and part three
in my series: The Kodi Compendium. In this
video we'll be evaluating the various OS
options for Raspberry Pi as they apply
to our specific use case scenario of
Kodi deployment in a home theater
environment.  Of course, all good decisions
begin with a good understanding of your
requirements.  For this project, we
absolutely must have lightweight
operating system (low memory and CPU
usage), easy installation, currently
maintained OS and it must be
supported by Kodi.
THAT simplifies things a bit. Now we can
whittle the list down a little further
by adding in a couple soft requirements.
For example, if the operating system was
purpose-built just for Kodi, that might
make things a little nicer. If we could
modify the OS (add on packages and
whatnot), that would also be nice. So we'll
make these soft requirements because you
could get by pretty good without these.
And then, there were three...
Now of these three, two of them are very
similar. I'm talking about OpenELEC and
LibreELEC. And basically Libre is a
recent fork off of OpenELEC - I think
2016 - and it was a pretty effective
mutiny. And as well it suffers from some
some security issues, so...  All right,
all right, all right. The decision comes down to
these two guys: OSMC and LibreELEC.
Let's take a closer look and see which
one's best suited for our application of
Kodi well just pop the SD card into our
computer using the adapter take note of
the drive letter of course
I'll start out by installing Libreelec
I'll be doing this on Windows as you can
see you can easily do it on Mac or Linux
as well nice thing about LibreELEC and
OSMC is they provide a tool for burning
an image to USB or SD card and here with
the LibreELEC tool running you just
select your platform
it'll be Raspberry Pi 2 & 3 for us and
then just select the recommended stable
version is what I would recommend unless
for some reason you need a different
version so you just click the download
button and select a file destination
and then when that finishes just select
your SD card drive then it's as simple
as hitting the right button and you're
off to the races hats off to the libera
left team for making it so easy peasy
and when that finishes we could just
close her out and take a look at the SD
Drive folder if you like make sure you
got stuff on there it's not still empty
for some reason ok we call that from
part 2 I'm using an ace Maxx wireless
keypad and Mouse with my Raspberry Pi
Kodi you can use a standard keyboard and
mouse if you prefer at least for the
initial configuration you're going to
need something either way just pop the
SD card into the pie and will be ready
for boot up
so yeah less than 30 seconds we have
Budaj not bad at all one big difference
between liberal AK and OSMC is liberal
a quill boot right into Kodi and all the
configs done within Kodi and that's
neither really good nor bad I didn't I
didn't see a huge advantage either way
but it does show how with liberal X
they're really just keeping you in Kodi
and with OSMC there is some operating
system configuration outside of Kodi now
with liberal I noticed some problems on
that initial boot trying to use the
wireless keypad and Mouse so I ended up
going back to the old standby wired
mouse and keyboard just to get the
initial config
the first boot the second boot and being
on I was able to use the wireless keypad
not sure what the problem is there maybe
driver related or whatnot so it's a
little annoying but not a huge problem
and gives you another reason yet again
to keep that old keyboard and mouse
handy right okay so now we can set our
hostname I would definitely not keep the
default in case you have multiple Kodi's
or something that won't work so I'm
gonna call mine htpc for home theater PC
if you want to use Wi-Fi go ahead and
select your Wi-Fi network and enter your
passphrase for me I'll be using a wired
Ethernet connection for now
okay yeah so now sharing and remote
access these are servers that run on the
OS underneath Kodi in case you want to
make changes to the file system like
manually edit your playlists or copy
files for another Kodi box perhaps look
at logs that type thing you want to have
SSH turned on if you're coming in from
Linux or if you're using putty from
Windows for example and Samba is for the
Windows File protocol so if you want to
use Windows Explorer to access the
filesystem Samba needs to be running I
recommend turning them both on now you
don't know if you might need them later
unless you know for sure you're not
gonna need one or the other I would just
turn them both on what you're looking at
here indicates that both are on with the
slider to the right and that's not very
obvious I wish they would make it more
obvious but there is a Kodi add-on for
the liberal X settings so you can tweak
these elsewhere later if you need to
so yeah that's pretty much all there is
to it as far as the basic config for
liberal echt as you can see it just
drops you right into Kodi and you can
see it's the default skin here for Kodi
17 Krypton which is called estuary I
believe it's not very awesome as far as
skins go but it gets the job done and
you can always change that later of
course I'm not going to be adding media
from my library in this episode I'll be
doing that in a future episode but I
will be getting into some analysis on
the performance here okay so yeah now
I'm going to SSH into this liberal at
Kodi box and the user for SSH is root
and the default password is liberal Eck
and we'll just take a quick gander here
and see what we can find out about
memory and RAM usage here's the top come
in which is the one five 15-minute load
average at the top and then you can see
CPU and memory being used by each task
here and this is idling the Kodi box
isn't really doing anything so we're
just looking at how much resources it
needs just to sit there and idle okay
and then besides the top come in I have
a little script which uses the top
command in addition to the free command
and we'll take a look at that here next
and see how that looks okay so as you
guys can see the script I'm running to
performance test is called Maya SH and
basically every five seconds it runs a
calculation on memory and CPU usage and
the memory calculation is based on the
free command and the CPU calculation is
based on the top command and we're just
strictly testing
I don't perform it so Kodi's not playing
any movies or any music this is just
what it needs to sit there an idol on
the liberal ik OS on the Raspberry Pi 3
now for the CPU it reads as a percent
but really what it is it's a load factor
the same load factor you get at the top
of the top come in so the way that works
is basically per core a 1.0 would be a
fully maxed pipeline so for a 4 core
it's about 4 or call it between 3 and
1/2 + 4 which is what you have with the
Raspberry Pi 3 so you're looking at what
point O 7 to 0.15 it's way way below 4
so it's a very very light CPU usage
right here which is what you would
expect which is good and the memory 30%
I mean to me that's reading a little
higher than I would like to see but
Kodi's a pretty big program and you
wouldn't necessarily expect it to need a
whole lot more memory than what it needs
here at idle but still it seems kind of
high right but we'll be running the same
tests on OSMC and we'll use this test
that's sort of a comparison for idle
resource usage to help as a basis for
our decision on choosing between these
two operating systems
okay so moving on to OSMC now I'll put
these links below of course the process
is basically almost identical as
liberally you select your operating
system one difference is their little
application is not as consolidated it's
got multiple pages and as you can see
little pull downs and you go on to the
next page as you go here select your
device select your language and it's
just not not quite as clean as the
liberal like one I felt like anyway but
it's it's still pretty good pretty easy
to use I just select the default latest
that they make available there we're
gonna use SD card of course and I'm
setting up for Wired OSMC it's kind of
funny they ask you for this right off
the bat here but you can easily change
the OSMC configuration after the
install completes so this is kind of
interesting to see my SD cards not
showing up I just had to plug it in all
the way and refresh and it popped right
up I thought that was a nice measure of
robustness on their part
okay as before if you want you can check
your removable drive folder for your SD
card make sure you got stuff in there
and that checks out just pop it into the
Raspberry Pi and booter own up
okay this initial boot up time for Au
SMC I found to be slightly longer than
that for liberal ekkuva 10 to 15 seconds
longer but not really a big deal right
also once we get to the data phase entry
here I found that the keypad actually
worked for osm see the wireless keypad
on the very first go which was better
than that experience I had with liberal
Eck however I still found it kind of
preferable to use the old keyboard and
in standard Mouse so I ended up using
those just to get through the initial
config so it drops you first into a skin
and then kind of backs you back out to a
config which is a little awkward but it
all happens without you doing anything
so no big deal
so we're just going to go through the
config here it wants us to select
language and time zone presumably the
language we entered earlier was for the
Installer language not for the Kodi
language so go ahead and set that up
here I'm in the Pacific time zone
and of course will change the machine
name I'll set it up just like I did
before so just as liberal ik had the
slider clarity problem wasn't clear
whether left or right was on or off oh
SNC has the white box problem so you see
these white boxes next to everything and
it's not clear what that means but it
says ssh is enabled to start with so
that's good i checked the box and that
made it disabled so i'll go figure but
we do want ssh so we'll make sure that's
enabled here with OSMC you actually
have a nice post install config area and
i'll show that later on but so i'm gonna
elect to do you like my network config
and stuff after the install and then you
can just select the skin you can select
the OSMC skin or the classic which is
really the default Kodi krypton skin and
I choose OSMC skin here but we'll end
up getting into skins in another part of
the series later and this OSMC skin
kind of becomes irrelevant in that case
unless you'd really like it
okay so yeah now just to show you guys
what configuring OSMC looks like from
within Kodi in this skin you go to
programs and then program add-ons and
then select my OSMC and the OSMC skin
it's off the main settings menu but this
is a nice way to configure OSMC without
having to drop into a shell into the
underlying OS and in here you can see
they've got different mini apps that you
run and the for example the network
configure wired wireless Bluetooth
database settings but yeah this whole
settings add-on is basically a way to
prevent you from having to manually
twiddle around and
the underlying operating system in OSMC
to get new services you use the little
shopping cart here which they call the
App Store here you can see the different
kind of services they have available
like samba I've already installed it
here as you see it says install and then
once you have them installed you can go
to the little gear which is like the
services that are currently running you
see I've got SSH and samba both running
here ok you can also configure updates
and general pack configurations you can
do overclocking from within here if you
want so yeah I thought they did a pretty
good job with this config app there is
something similar to this and liberality
I didn't show it here I don't think they
call there's an app store forget I think
they just call it services and you can
flip them on and off but it's basically
a similar type add-on where you can
configure the underlying system there
alright it's time to get down to the net
cuttin for OSMC and do some performance
testing for OSMC the SSH login is user
OSMC password OSMC of course this test
is an idle test so Kodi's not doing
anything again and it's the exact same
script I used to test liberal app so one
thing that stands off right off the bat
is the lower memory usage I'm showing
around 11% use here as compared to 30%
or so for a liberalelect another
interesting observation I had was that
OSMC CPU usage continues to drop as
time goes on I can see a second round of
testing here and the CPU usage will
actually go all the way to zero at least
as it registers here it's got to be
pretty pretty close to zero to show zero
I didn't see that with liberal ik I saw
a stabilization of low CPU usage and
that point teen range but with OSMC you
do see this grind towards zero so when
you take this data of lower C
few usage at idle lower memory usage at
idle yes it's a limited data set but you
would have to conclude that OSMC could
possibly be a more lightweight operating
system than liberally
now of course there's other factors
involved besides squeezing out that last
bit of efficiency for example liberal X
seems to be slightly more user-friendly
with the install I would tip my hat to
them for that on the other hand osm C is
more modifiable to modify the underlying
operating system being able to add
packages with ease and whatnot or as
liberal X more clampdown so depending on
your use case you know if you just want
super simple I would still recommend
liberal Eck if you want something a
little more power user and possibly more
lightweight go with a lesser so let's
wrap for this episode of the Kodi
compendium and OS selection for kody on
Raspberry Pi I hope it's been helpful to
you guys definitely stay tuned as we get
into the meat of the series in the next
episode we'll be discussing grooming
your library and preparing to get all
your media import it into Kodi that's
how it's done thanks for watching
