14 DAY TRIAL // OpenELEC, an embedded operating system built specifically to run the Kodi (XBMC) media player hub, has been upgraded to version 6.0 and is now ready for download.
The development branch of OpenELEC 6.0 has finally ended, and the new version packs quite a few changes and improvements. The most notable, but not the most important, is that the 32-bit builds have been dropped.
The devs probably figured that the number of users for this particular architecture is low enough so that the investment in the time required to make these builds is no longer justified.
Sure enough, some users are going to be upset that this is happening, but it also means that the developers now have more free time to work on other stuff.
We also have to remember that OpenELEC is actually an operating system, which means that it's about much more than just the Kodi base. The team also needs to work on the other components, like the Linux kernel or the drivers.
It's also nice to notice that the distribution continues to be a system that integrates pretty much all of the latest packages, making this system one of the few that live on the bleeding edge.
OpenELEC 6.0 comes with Linux kernel
"The most visible change is Kodi 15.2 (Isengard). Beginning with Kodi 15.0 most audio encoder, audio decoder, PVR and visualisation addons are no longer pre-bundled into OpenELEC but can be downloaded from the Kodi addon repo if required. PVR backends such as VDR and TVHeadend will install needed dependencies automatically," wrote the developers.
According to the changelog, Linux kernel has been updated to version 4.1, systemd has been updated to version 219, and new Nvidia drivers have been provided as well.
You can download OpenELEC 6.0 right now from Softpedia, but you also have to keep in mind that this is not a regular image. Still, you can run it from a USB key by using the regular tools.