OSMC's March update brings support for latest Raspberry Pi

Mar 19, 2018 14:47 GMT  ·  By

OSMC (Open Source Media Center), the free and open-source media player operating system based on the Linux kernel and designed for single-board computers received March 2018's update with dozens of changes, including support for the latest Raspberry Pi model.

Raspberry Pi Foundation announced last week on Pi Day, March 14, 2018, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ single-board computer (SBC), which features updated hardware, including a 1.4GHz 64-bit Quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU, Gigabit Ethernet over USB 2.0, Bluetooth 4.2, Dual-band 802.11ac wireless LAN, and PoE support.

The developers of the OSMC Linux OS (formerly RaspBMC) received some pre-production units from Raspberry Pi Foundation to prepare their upcoming release for the new SBC, and March's update is now live with Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ support, allowing you to transform it into a versatile home theatre system (HTPC).

"OSMC would like to thank Raspberry Pi for pre-production units which allowed us to support the device on launch day," said the devs in the release announcement. "After updating to OSMC's March release, you can simply swap an SD card out from a Pi 2 or Pi 3 and put it in a Pi 3 B+. We will produce updated images with support shortly."

Here's what's new in OSMC's March release

Apart from the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ support, OSMC's March release brings a bunch of other goodies, including ZRAM support for all Raspberry Pi models, support for additional Allo digi cards to My OSMC, as well as support for various USB DACs and ALSA volume control support for analogue audio on the Vero 4K board.

For the Vero 4K users, OSMC's March release will now stop sending of Wake on LAN packets and playback before entering standby mode. The official OSMC skin received some usability improvements as well, and users can now finally mount legacy Samba shares without changing any mount options.

Under the hood, OSMC's March release ships with the Linux 4.14.26 LTS kernel for supported Raspberry Pi SBCs. Other than that, the devs cleaned up Apple TV support from the build system and added NFS (Network-attached storage) debugging support to Vero 4K boards. Various Raspberry Pi improvements are present as well.

You can download OSMC's March release right now if you want to transform your tiny SBC into an Open Source media center or HTPC. Also, OSMC devs announced a competition where you can win a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. For more information on how to participate check out the competition's details here.