GeeXboX 3.0

GeeXboX 3.0
September 18th, 2012tomlohaveNo comments
A shiny new GeeXboX release has arrived! GeeXboX 3.0 is a major upgrade that integrates XBMC 11 “Eden” and adds the long-requested PVR functionality. This means you can finally use GeeXboX to watch and record live TV too! In addition to our usual x86 ISOs, this release is also available for several embedded platforms, with working full HD video and graphics acceleration for most of them.

A year in the making, this new GeeXboX 3.0 release is the accomplishment of hours, days, months of efforts from a lot of people. The ISO image of “GeeXboX for PC” edition grew up to 140 MB, mostly due to additional firmware and drivers to improve hardware support. We still think of GeeXboX as a lightweight distro, aiming at targeting the most PCs and devices as possible. The whole base system has been overhauled as usual, with countless package upgrades for improved stability and functionality, also benefitting from several improvements to the underlying OpenBricks build system.

GeeXboX also support many embedded devices running ARM SoCs (such as TI OMAP4 Pandaboard, nVidia Tegra 2, Solid-Run Cubox powered by Marvell Armada, ST-Ericsson Snowball), and more will be coming soon. Preliminary support for Toshiba AC100 (Tegra2-based netbook) and Raspberry Pi is already integrated in the development tree.

Here’s a roundup of the new release:

New features:

XBMC Media Center 11 “Eden” frontend.
PVR support for DVB Digital TV, to watch and record live TV
Improved remote control support
Support for Full HD videos on PandaBoard
Support for Full HD videos on Cubox
Improved HDD installation
Installation support for (U)EFI systems
Installation support for SSD’s
Supported Architectures:

x86 32 and 64 bits PCs
ARM TI OMAP4 Pandaboard
ARM nVidia Tegra2 Harmony
ARM Cubox (armada5xx)
ARM Snowball ux500
System:

Linux Kernel v3.4.4.
Systemd v188.
BusyBox v1.21
Connman Network Manager v1.6.
Xorg Server v1.11.4.
Mesa v8.0.3
OPKG Package Manager v0.18
USB persistent user data storage.
Audio Drivers:

ALSA v1.0.24.1.
Support for Analog, SPDIF and HDMI output devices.
Video Drivers:

Support for Intel, nVidia, ATI, Matrox and VIA GPUs.
Support for CRT, LCD and HDMI output devices.
OpenGL and OpenGL|ES hardware assisted graphics acceleration.
VDPAU, VA-API and Crystal HD hardware assisted video decoding for nVidia, Intel and Broadcom GPUs.
Input:

Mouse and Synaptics touch pads.
HID Keyboards.
Remote Controls.
PluseEight CEC devices.
Networking Features:

NFS shares.
Samba auto-discovery.
UPnP / DLNA media discovery.
ZeroConf services announcements.
HTTP server.
FTP server
SSH server
MediaCenter:

XBMC Media Center 11 “Eden” frontend.
Movies and TV Shows, with subtitles support.
Music Collection
Pictures and Slideshows
CDDA, DVD and (non encrypted) Bluray support.
Media Database Support.
Internet MovieDB / TVDB metadata and covers grabbers.
Skins
Vu+ addon
Xvdr addon
Vdr server
Tvheadend server