Which distribution do I choose ?

K

Kangaroo Jack

Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2013
Messages
26
Reaction score
0
Location
King William's Town


I will soon get myself a Pi 3 as I would like to stream instead of watching conventional television. I would also like to use it for web browsing as well at Youtube. Which version of Linux would be best for this purpose ? Was thinking Noobs, Rasbian or Linux Mint. I've previously read that Youtube lags and is jittery on most versions.

Would appreciate any advice on this.
 
I run Ubuntu with LXQT Desktop for my Laptop and Elementry for my Desktop. Both are basically ubuntu, but I like LXQT cause its super light on resources. Its window manager is openbox.
 
OSMc vs Openelec VS Librelec
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=267007

From the discussion in there it looks like Openelec has no web browser,
I've only ever used Raspbian on my Pi2 and now Pi3 the Pixel destop manager looks good, you can of course uninstall the unecessary software after to streamline things. Though Raspbian doesn't use the latest version of kodi unfortunately.

So you're possibly looking at dual booting it, for that you'll just use Noobs and add the Openelec tar to the OS folder in Noobs.

I've always just run Kodi from cli on Raspbian. Works ok
 
Last edited:
Im not sure that Mint will run on a Rpi3, as the Rpi is ARM architecture.

As the others have said it might be more beneficial to look into a media player based OS. You could always have 2 memory cards and just swop them out as needed. One with Raspian and the other with the Media OS.

I believe Noobs is just an easy way of installing Raspian.
 
Always been partial to Arch but you don't seem the type based on the above comment :D
 
Thanks ponder.
I've moved over to Arch on Pi3. Works very nice.
 
KDE Neon
Oops. Not sure if that will run on the Pi.
 
Last edited:
Kangaroo Jack said:


I will soon get myself a Pi 3 as I would like to stream instead of watching conventional television. I would also like to use it for web browsing as well at Youtube. Which version of Linux would be best for this purpose ? Was thinking Noobs, Rasbian or Linux Mint. I've previously read that Youtube lags and is jittery on most versions.

Would appreciate any advice on this.
Click to expand...
Dual boot with Raspbian and OSMC/Libreelec. I prefer Osmc because the default skin is beautiful and you can overclock the Pi. Noobs are used to install both and will come preinstalled on the sd card.
 
I'm all for Rpi and i'm a big fan of it. Dont get me wrong.

But its incapable for media streaming not for me. Although Kodi Runs surprisingly well OpenElec I guess the performance is about the same on OSMC never tried it.

You cant run Netflix on it. Kodi has a plugin that will allow you to register it to stream from Youtube. And there are a bunch of TV channels you can add.

But I cant get used to the interface, I far rather prefer installing Chrome OS on an old laptop and use that for dedicated streaming only.

If you want a small dedicated media center without cluttering your living room a good android media streamer will probably be better.
 
SBSP said:
I'm all for Rpi and i'm a big fan of it. Dont get me wrong.

But its incapable for media streaming not for me. Although Kodi Runs surprisingly well OpenElec I guess the performance is about the same on OSMC never tried it.

You cant run Netflix on it. Kodi has a plugin that will allow you to register it to stream from Youtube. And there are a bunch of TV channels you can add.

But I cant get used to the interface, I far rather prefer installing Chrome OS on an old laptop and use that for dedicated streaming only.

If you want a small dedicated media center without cluttering your living room a good android media streamer will probably be better.
Click to expand...
There's many themes available for Kodi but, yes, it was never meant to be a media center/streamer
 
backstreetboy said:
There's many themes available for Kodi but, yes, it was never meant to be a media center/streamer
Click to expand...

Any suggestions for a streamer? (looking at live international tv/radio as well as movies and series), simple interface for technophobes would be good & be able to use vpns for georestricted tv/radio.
 
Depends on your usage. I'd go android because of availability of streaming apps - Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Underground, etc. Way better experience than via a browser.

Regardless though it's easy to change if it's the wrong choice. Try out a few :-)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X