Discovering OSMC

Kodi, previously XBMC, has been experiencing a real boom since the appearance of single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi. Many users wouldn't want to do without their Kodi/Rasp Pi combination, a free alternative to Chromecast, Apple TV, and Amazon Fire TV. Lately, the Open Source Media Center (OSMC) distribution [1] brought Kodi to the Rasp Pi. It has a PC installation assistant, a Debian base, and numerous unique features, and it never forgets that a media center should focus on the TV.

The OpenELEC [2] Kodi distribution enjoys an excellent reputation among Rasp Pi users for speed, reliability, and high performance. However, the foundation has been optimized for multimedia tasks, so it can only function as a media center. As a result, the user running OpenELEC would need to get an additional Rasp Pi for other uses.

Other media center distributions that sat on traditional distributions lent themselves to multiple uses. The forerunners in this category include Raspbmc [3] and Xbian [4], which have been discontinued. As was the case with Xbian, the OSMC developers also rely on Debian for a foundation. Specifically, they use the current Debian 8.1 Jessie. This means that OSMC is suitable for use as a media center, a small file or print server, and, in fact, almost any project you might try with the Raspberry Pi. However, this does not make OSMC more complicated than other media centers; in fact, OSMC does a better job of handling many details.

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