It now uses Linux kernel 4.9.13 for Raspberry Pi builds

Mar 27, 2017 01:10 GMT  ·  By

LibreELEC developers announced the release and general availability of the first maintenance update to the major LibreELEC 8.0 stable series of the Linux-based operating system built around the Kodi open-source media center.

The LibreELEC 8.0 "Krypton" series launched a month ago based on the massive Kodi 17 media center release, which is also dubbed "Krypton." Now that Kodi 17 received its first point release, versioned 17.1, the time has come for LibreELEC 8.0.1 to get out with various improvements, up-to-date components, and various bug fixes.

The biggest new features of the LibreELEC 8.0.1 update appears to be support for the recently announced Raspberry Pi Zero W single-board computer (SBC), a variant of Raspberry Pi Zero that comes with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support. It also improves software HEVC decoding on Raspberry Pi 3 and Compute Module 3 hardware.

"LibreELEC (Krypton) v8.0.1 MR is available bringing Kodi v17.1, hardware support for the Raspberry Pi Zero W, improved software HEVC decoding on RPi3/CM3 hardware, driver support for Fe Pi audio cards, and support for Cirrus Logic DAC audio cards (thanks to @HiassofT)," reads the announcement.

Fe Pi audio boards now officially supported

Among other noteworthy improvements implemented in LibreELEC 8.0.1, we can mention support for Fe Pi audio boards, as well as for Cirrus Logic Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi 2 DAC boards, along with support for configurable CEC button repeat settings on all build projects.

Under the hood, LibreELEC 8.0.1 uses the long-term supported Linux 4.9.13 kernel for the Generic, Raspberry Pi, and Raspberry Pi 2 builds, as well as the Linux 3.14 LTS kernel branch for Amlogic Aarch64 (ARM64) projects. Among the bug fixes, it adds support for lirc_xbox driver and addresses some issues that users reported with i.MX 6 boards.

The audio delay issues that occurred when attempting to use Bluetooth speakers were also fixed in this first maintenance update to LibreELEC 8.0 "Krypton," which you can download right now from the official website of the operating system for various supported hardware. The full changelog is attached below for more details.

LibreELEC 8.0.1 Changelog