Archive:Kodibuntu

XBMC Live is the XBMC Media Center software bundled with an embedded operating-system, all pre-packaged for that set-top-box feeling. XBMC Live also lets you easily boot to the XBMC Live CD in order to demo XBMC Media Center for your friends and family on practically any relatively modern computer, (as long as it was manufactured in the last 5-years or so it should meet the XBMC's minimum requirements).

What is XBMC Live?

XBMC Live is a boot-CD with XBMC Media Center pre-configued to work directly out-of-the-box without touching the users harddrive for demo purposes. Once booted, XBMC Live will give the user the option to either just run it as a demo from only the CD (not touching your harddrive) or do a permanent installation of XBMC Live complete with embedded operating-system onto a 2GB (or larger) USB-flash-memory-stick or your internal harddrive for a dedicated set-top-box style installation of XBMC, currently with Microsoft's Windows MCE (Media Center Edition) Remote with USB IR-receiver receiver dongle as the default supported controller which is supported directly out-of-the-box.

When installed onto a USB flash drive or hard disk drive XBMC Live has the ability to save settings and make updates to XBMC Media Center and the operating-system back onto the USB flash drive or hard disk drive that it is installed onto, this is not possible when running XBMC Live from a Live CD booting from a CD-ROM disc as they are read-only and any changes settings are only temporarily saved until the system is rebooted.

XBMC Live minimum and recommended hardware requirements

• x86 (Intel/AMD-based) processor computer capable of booting to CD-ROM.
  • Intel Pentium 4, Intel Pentium M, AMD Athlon XP/64, AMD Opteron, or newer CPU (that support SSE).
  • Very fast modern dual-core processor is required to decode H.264 videos in FullHD (1080p).
  • For clarification; XBMC Live does not work on the Xbox game-console.
• ATI/AMD, Intel, or NVIDIA (recommended) graphic controller which supports OpenGL 1.4 or later (2.0 recommended).
  • ATI Radeon R420 (X800) or newer supported, ATI Radeon R700 (HD 4000) or newer recommended.
  • Intel GMA 950 (945G) or newer supported, Intel GMA X4500HD (G45) or newer recommended.
  • NVIDIA GeForce 6-Series and newer supported, GeForce 8-Series and newer recommended.
• Optional is to install to a 2GB (or larger) USB-flash-drive or internal harddrive.
  • If you like to install XBMC Live to USB then note that it can not still have U3 software on it (so uninstall that first).
  • Larger than 2GB is if you have a lot of media as covers are cached on it.

How To Install XBMC Live

Installing XBMC Live to an external disk or USB flash drive can be accomplished in three simple steps.

Before installing XBMC Live to USB device (hard drive or flash drive) it is highly recommended that any USB drives other than the one being used for installation be unplugged to prevent the accidental overwrite of data on other drives. Installing XBMC Live will format the selected drive and erase all data on the drive prior to installation.

1. Download the XBMC Live ISO image from XBMC Downloads and burn it to a CD-R/RW.
2. Disconnect all USB storage devices other than the drive intended for installation.
3. Boot your computer using the XBMC Live disc you just created and follow the instructions on the screen. In some cases you may need to change settings in the BIOS of your computer in order to boot to a CD. For more information on booting from a CD, read the About.com article "How to Boot from CD or DVD".

• When prompted it is recommended that you elect not to set the permanent storage area to "None."

Username and password to the underlying OS environment

Username and password to the underlying OS environment are not needed by average users of XBMC Live, but here they are just in case you want to dig into the (very) advanced possibilities that are available. The default username and password are listed below, but during installation, you will be able to change these to your own username and password. We reccommend that you write down the username and password you have chosen, and store it away in a safe place;

Username: xbmc
Password: xbmc

Benefits and Limitations of XBMC Live

The limitations of XBMC Live differs if you are only running it as a Live CD bootable CD-ROM disc or if you have installed XBMC Live to a USB flash drive or a hard disk drive, this is because when running XBMC Live as a Live CD it can not save any changes past a reboot of the system.

XBMC Live running as Live CD

• Since a Live CD is booted from read-only media, it requires either installation to rewriteable media (i.e. a USB flash drive or hard disk drive) or complete remastering to install additional software or modify the existing files.

XBMC Live installed on USB or HDD

• Some computers, particularly older ones, may not have a BIOS that supports USB booting. Many which do support USB booting may still be unable to boot the device in question. In these cases a computer can often be "redirected" to boot from a USB device through use of an initial bootable CD or floppy disk for live USB installs.

• In contrast to the Live CD, the data contained on the booting device can be changed and additional data stored on the same device. This allows for Live USB/HDD to be used as personal storage, as it allows a user to carry their preferred operating system, applications, and configuration as well as personal files with them, making it easy to share a single system between multiple users.

• The absence of moving parts in USB flash devices allows for faster seek time than is possible with hard drives or optical media, meaning all programs will start faster from a USB flash drive than from a local hard disk or Live CD. However, as USB devices typically achieve lower data transfer rates than internal hard drives, booting from a computer lacking USB 2.0 support can sometimes be very slow compared to booting from a internal hard disk drive.

• Due to the additional write cycles that occur on a full-blown installation to a USB flash drive, the life of the USB flash drive may be slightly reduced. This usually does not apply to systems particularly designed for live systems which keep all changes in RAM until the user logs off, and XBMC Live developers have done their best to try to prevent this from happening.

XBMC Live Development

Great, so you think that you would like to help with the development or XBMC Live?

Concept

The idea is to package XBMC for Linux with a stripped version of an existing Linux distribution as a bootable LiveDistro (a.k.a. Live CD), (the alternative would be our very own custom Linux distribution which is not exactly realistic). By doing this XBMC should be able to be installed onto any USB flash drive or harddisk drive using this LiveDistro (a.k.a. Live CD) on the target device. Note that even though a custom version of the Linux distribution, (meaning stripped for XBMC use only), the currently plan is still to try to use a vanilla kernel, (as long as that is possible).

Operating-System

XBMC Live 'Dharma' (10.1) is currently based on the Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS, that is, it is Linux based. The operating-system has completely been hidden away on purpose, the point is to create set-top-box feeling with as close to instant-on boot as possible, (similar to that of a stand-alone DVD-player or video game-console). The end-user should not need to know which operating-system it is running on, or even that it is running on an operating-system at all, for that matter.

Optimizing the (perceived) boot time of the XBMC Live distro

Based on the XBMC Community Forum discussion here (link) we have started a article here in the XBMC Online Manual wiki on how to HOW-TO improve the (perceived) boot time on a general Linux distribution. Please refer to that wiki article and the XBMC Community Forum thread for ideas and discussion about how to improve the (perceived) startup time of XBMC Live from a cold boot (whether from Live CD, Live USB, or from a harddrive installation of XBMC Live, or any other Linux distro for that matter).

XBMC Media Center

XBMC Live contains XBMC for Linux compiled with the 'standalone' mode, this enabled certain functions that are not available in normal XBMC installations (Windows, Mac Linux), these functions include Power Management, and Network Management.

External links to other guides

• Easy XBMC Live installation instructions (covers USB and HDD installation) Now updated to Version 10.0