I’m about to receive my RockPro64 and I’ve already been searching for the best SO options for it. I’d like it to be both a Linux server (so that I can run a couple of services like OwnCloud, a torrent server, Radarr, Sonarr, etc) and also boot it as a Kodi media center so that I could control it using the TV remote (mostly to play my local network videos as well as stream a couple of Plex shares from friends).
Given that context DietPi looks fantastic from the point of view of a robust headless server, but I’m a little worried because I’m not sure whether its Kodi has hardware acceleration support to the RockPro64 or not. I mean, if I install and configure DietPi to directly boot on Kodi will it be as much optimized on the RP64 as, for example, the Libreelec (which as I read on the forums has a well tuned hardware acceleration and supports smooth 4k60 playback)?
I’d appreciate any help or at least some pointing in the right direction.
Thanks and congratulations on the nice work you’ve been doing with DietPi.
Thanks for the response, but are you sure we’re talking about the same thing?
What I’d like to do is install a Linux distro that can go directly to into Kodi (an optimized RockPro64 Kodi, which has hardware acceleration as well as all Libreelec optimizations) but at the same time allow me ssh access so that I can administrate it as I normally do with any Linux server (run for example a torrent client, maybe a http server, etc).
We added experimental RK3399 GPU acceleration with v6.26 (currently beta) via Mali drivers provided by RockChip. The question is now if the defaut Kodi from Debian repo can be configured to use these Mali drivers, since RockChip does not provide a special Kodi build: https://github.com/rockchip-linux/rk-rootfs-build/tree/master/packages/arm64
Would be great if some could test these drivers with Kodi and also how well desktop applications benefit from them: https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi/issues/3131
After applying beta, simply install or reinstall Kodi: dietpi-software (re)install 31
The drivers are installed together with Xserver.
I’m really sorry for such a long time without answer. Thing is I only had one sd card and couldn’t use it to do my tests. I’ve just installed DietPi Beta, but I’m having this message when trying to install Kodi as suggested:
DietPi-Update
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Mode: Checking for DietPi updates
[ INFO ] DietPi-Update | Checking mirror: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MichaIng/DietPi/beta/dietpi/server_version-6
[ OK ] DietPi-Update | Using update server: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MichaIng/DietPi/beta/dietpi/server_version-6
[ OK ] DietPi-Update | No update required, your DietPi installation is already up to date:
[ INFO ] DietPi-Update | Current version : v6.26.3 (branch: Fourdee/beta)
[ INFO ] DietPi-Update | Latest version : v6.26.3 (branch: MichaIng/beta)
root@DietPi:~# dietpi-software install 31
[ OK ] DietPi-Software | Initialised database
[ OK ] DietPi-Software | Reading database
DietPi-Software
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Mode: Automated install
[FAILED] DietPi-Software | Software title (Kodi) is not supported for RockPro64 (aarch64).
With this change (can be manually applied) Kodi can be installed on all RK3399 boards, including RockPro64: https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi/commit/48ed27a4d83a967f95aa7a44d7a3f70101404f55
Note that the default Kodi package from Debian repo will be installed and I am not sure if it uses the Mali drivers correctly, although in theory since it uses X server and fitting xorg.conf is in place.
However if it does not work, we’ll need a custom Kodi build, similar to what Armbian community did as of link in my last post.