14 DAY TRIAL // OpenELEC 4.0 Beta 3, an embedded operating system built specifically to run XBMC, the open source entertainment media hub, has been released and is now available for download and testing.
The OpenELEC developers are moving fast with their operating system and now another Beta has been launched. The developers say that it's based on XBMC Gotham Beta 3, but the XBMC developers have yet to make an official announcement.
“Internally this will be known by the less-catchy name OpenELEC 3.95.3. This release includes some bugfixes and improvements since 3.95.2 (beta2). Besides the usual bugfixes and package updates as well the XBMC Gotham beta3 release we also added drivers and firmwares for some more Realtek WLAN USB devices and DVB devices. Also we added initial support for TTS (TextToSpeech) output which can be already used together with Ruuk's Addo,” reads the official announcement.
The OpenELEC developers have explained that a lot of work has been put into the new 4.0 branch and that it's vastly different from the 3.0 and 2.0 release.
One of the first improvements that users will notice in OpenELEC 4.0 Beta 3 is the introduction of a new Linux kernel, 3.13.7. The developers have tried to keep the latest version of kernel in their distro, which means that the next version of OpenELEC might even feature the newly launched Linux kernel 3.14.
Other packages that have been included are util-macros 1.19.0, xrandr 1.4.2, systemd 212, wlan-firmware 0.0.18, xf86-video-nvidia 331.49, xf86-video-intel 2.99.911, openssh 6.6p1, libpng 1.6.10, sqlite-autoconf 3080401, and service.openelec.settings 0.3.14.
Also, a number of new packages have been added, like RTL8192DU, RTL8723AU, PR4473, PR447, and PR4445. The developers took care of a few bugs and fixed a crash that occurred on exit, but only with amd + vdpau.
XBMC 13.0 Beta 4 “Gotham” comes with Android hardware decoding, various Raspberry Pi and Android speed improvements, stereoscopic 3D Rendering, better touchscreen support, improved UPnP capabilities, lots of audio engine improvements, better subtitle searches, extended Python and JSON-RPC API for developers, FFMpeg 1.2, and much more. You can find out more about the underlying XBMC system for OpenELEC from our initial report.
Check out the official announcement for a complete list of changes and improvements. You can download OpenELEC 4.0 Beta 3 right now from Softpedia.
Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.