The latest development release of the OpenELEC Linux distro is available from Softpedia

Sep 8, 2014 13:12 GMT  ·  By

OpenELEC, an embedded operating system built specifically to run XBMC, the open source entertainment media hub, has been upgraded to version 4.2 Beta 6.

The OpenELEC developers are not staying idly by and now they've released a new version of their system, although it looks like they are no longer closely following the XBMC launches. Until now, the two seemed to be linked, at least in terms of releases, but XBMC already has a stable version out and OpenELEC is not following.

On the other hand, XBMC is actually just a media hub and OpenELEC is an operating system, which is much more complex. It needs a lot more adjusting and there are numerous packages that need to be upgraded, fixed, and added.

What's new in the latest OpenELEC

If you are an OpenELEC regular user, you will definitely notice that some of the main packages have been upgraded. In fact, OpenELEC 4.2 Beta has taken some very big steps and it's one of the few operating systems out there that come with bleeding edge packages.

"This release includes some bugfixes, security fixes and improvements since OpenELEC-4.1.5. Besides the usual bugfixes and package updates we updated Mesa to Mesa-10.3-rc3, llvm to llvm-3.5.0 and kernel to linux 3.16.2. We fixed a crash in our installer and when pairing a PS3 remote and updated the RaspberryPi firmware to include the last fixes and features. Also we added STK1160 framegrabber, CH341 USB-serial support and the PSTATE CPU scaling driver for Intel Systems," reads the official announcement.

As you can see from the changelog, this is by far one of the most interesting releases in the series so far and it's also a sign that it's probably getting closer to a final version.

Raspberry Pi users rejoice

The OpenELEC devs are also making their system ready to work on the Raspberry Pi mini PCs, but then again, this is a distro for embedded devices, so it would be strange if it didn't work. The developers have explained that the new MMC/SDCard driver has been enabled by default, but it can be disabled.

It's also worth noting that OpenELEC 4.2 Beta 6 is based on Linux kernel 3.16.x and Xorg-1.16. The latest NVIDIA drivers are being used, systemd 216 is being used, and support has been added to perform filesystem checks on every boot.

Check out the official announcement for a complete list of changes and improvements. You can download OpenELEC 4.2 Beta 6 right now from Softpedia, but keep in mind that this is not a regular image file.

Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.