Somebody posted on the Kodi forums that they had Kodi running under Ubuntu server based on something prepared by one of the Kodi Team Devs for other Intel platform SOC's.
I had it running very well on my Beebox with a Haswell SOC so I thought that I would see what happened when I tried it on the X5.
I've only been testing for half an hour but so far it works a treat.
Note that I am using Ethernet and not WiFi at the moment (will test later).
I took the belt and braces approach and did the following:
Firstly I backed up my Windows 10 installation using the free version of Macrium Reflect.
Downloaded the latest release of Ubuntu Server 16.04 64 LTS from the Ubuntu website, writing to a USB stick with Rufus
Then headed over to this thread and followed the instructions carefully.
To boot into the X5, insert the USB stick into the rear USB 3.0 port, switch on and keep pressing the del key on your keyboard until the BIOS comes up and then select the USB stick as the primary boot source.
If (like me) you are not an experienced Linux user, as first the instructions can seem a little daunting, they are not as bad as you think if you do a little research into using a linux text editor such as Vi (if like me you prefer not to have to type everything in manually, then you can use use a Windows PC with Putty, which will enable you to SSH into the sever (once installed) and cut and paste just about everything that you need.
Use the command ifconfig on the server command prompt to discover the ip address that you can use in putty.
At the point in the instructions where you load Kodi, do so but don't make any of the recommended settings changes yet.
Instead, exit Kodi and go to post 3725 of the thread (page 249) and download the 2 files mentioned, which will enable audio to work.
I downloaded the files using my Windows machine and then used WinSCP, a sort of windows file explorer program that will allow you to copy the files from windows to linux, which is very easy to use.
Once the 2 packages have been installed, reboot and when presented with Kodi, carry out the recommended settings modifications and you are set to go.
What you will notice about the audio settings is that the audio device is preset and cannot be changed, there is no passthrough setting at this point and it doesn't look as if 5.1/DTS audio comes through in it's native form at the moment but considering that as of early this morning no audio drivers existed, fritsch seemed to work quite some magic to bring some to the fore.
But despite having no HD audio at the moment, all files that I have thrown at it play the audio, regardless of format, so there will be no crackles and hiss.
I have found video quality and playback so far to be fantastic.
Note that the Kodi is a nightly build, which will get updated automatically (unless you opt out) so bear in mind that as is it still at the development stage that there might be a bug or two, although I haven't found one yet.
Have fun.
I had it running very well on my Beebox with a Haswell SOC so I thought that I would see what happened when I tried it on the X5.
I've only been testing for half an hour but so far it works a treat.
Note that I am using Ethernet and not WiFi at the moment (will test later).
I took the belt and braces approach and did the following:
Firstly I backed up my Windows 10 installation using the free version of Macrium Reflect.
Downloaded the latest release of Ubuntu Server 16.04 64 LTS from the Ubuntu website, writing to a USB stick with Rufus
Then headed over to this thread and followed the instructions carefully.
To boot into the X5, insert the USB stick into the rear USB 3.0 port, switch on and keep pressing the del key on your keyboard until the BIOS comes up and then select the USB stick as the primary boot source.
If (like me) you are not an experienced Linux user, as first the instructions can seem a little daunting, they are not as bad as you think if you do a little research into using a linux text editor such as Vi (if like me you prefer not to have to type everything in manually, then you can use use a Windows PC with Putty, which will enable you to SSH into the sever (once installed) and cut and paste just about everything that you need.
Use the command ifconfig on the server command prompt to discover the ip address that you can use in putty.
At the point in the instructions where you load Kodi, do so but don't make any of the recommended settings changes yet.
Instead, exit Kodi and go to post 3725 of the thread (page 249) and download the 2 files mentioned, which will enable audio to work.
I downloaded the files using my Windows machine and then used WinSCP, a sort of windows file explorer program that will allow you to copy the files from windows to linux, which is very easy to use.
Once the 2 packages have been installed, reboot and when presented with Kodi, carry out the recommended settings modifications and you are set to go.
What you will notice about the audio settings is that the audio device is preset and cannot be changed, there is no passthrough setting at this point and it doesn't look as if 5.1/DTS audio comes through in it's native form at the moment but considering that as of early this morning no audio drivers existed, fritsch seemed to work quite some magic to bring some to the fore.
But despite having no HD audio at the moment, all files that I have thrown at it play the audio, regardless of format, so there will be no crackles and hiss.
I have found video quality and playback so far to be fantastic.
Note that the Kodi is a nightly build, which will get updated automatically (unless you opt out) so bear in mind that as is it still at the development stage that there might be a bug or two, although I haven't found one yet.
Have fun.
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