- Apr 20, 2009
- 3,793
- 1
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Well, after living with some apparent bugs for a while, I up and decided it was high time to fix my Chromeboxes. The primary bug I was dealing with involved anything of or relating to deinterlacing. In short, changing the settings often resulted in the picture freezing and skipping and eventually Kodi would crash and relaunch. Beyond that, I for some reason set deinterlacing to always on, and this was KILLING the quality of playback, especially for DVD rips (it was harder to notice in HD content). One scene was on Training Day DVD and the coffee cup in the diner about 8-9 minutes into the movie was not clear at ALL.
So, after some piddling around this weekend, I settled on the following:
Lubuntu 15.04
Kernel 4.4
Intel drivers from: https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads
Initially I was running Kodibuntu, which I had patched to 14.04 LTS release. I had come to realize that ALL of my deinterlacing woes were driver related. I had perused the web for drivers, and came upon the link above. It ONLY supports 15.x plus versions it appeared for Ubuntu. I honestly didn't try to find an alternative and moved straight to 15.10, so I may need to consider that if someone has a better suggestion (I honestly would like to run an LTS release but would also prefer to not have interlacing issues).
When I tried 15.10 I could not get the wireless to turn on. I had updated several different things trying to get the wireless to work, but no matter what suggestions I followed, the wnic would not turn on. I moved to 15.04, and the wnic was immediately present and working.
Kernel 4.4 upgrade (Install steps - http://linuxdaddy.com/blog/install-kernel-4-4-on-ubuntu/) was installed because the standard kernel in 15.04 (3.18 I believe) would not allow the use of HDMI audio. I had seen a few articles eluding to this, so I just went with the latest and greatest kernel, and HDMI audio immediately popped up.
Those Intel drivers more or less started this all. I did at one point run Kodi without them (can't remember on which version), but I had noticed the CPU was running steadily above 80%. After installing those drivers, I was more consistently seeing 20-40% CPU load during playback.
Only thing now is Lubuntu is not configured anywhere as nicely as Kodibuntu. When Kodi crashes, it crashes to the desktop. Using the remote CAN work if you're on the desktop and can highlight and click the Kodi shortcut. I did configure Kodi to auto start, so on that front a reboot is painless. I just need to optimize what happens if it crashes and I need to bring it back up. I'd prefer it just restart Kodi, but haven't dug into that yet.
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Beyond my how to above, I am curious if anyone else out there has a better way. Thus far, I can now toggle deinterlacing settings without a crash, though in some of my testing with different version it may be a little iffy. I did get a crash at one point, but fairly sure it was on 15.10.
Just curious what others are doing. I have to say, I've definitely spent some time in Linux, but I really feel like they have a LONG way to go. I don't feel like I would see anywhere near this amount of grief if it was simply running Windows. I realize a good chunk of this is probably Intel's fault, and perhaps I wouldn't have all of this crap with an Nvidia card... I dunno. I just want to get this to a point where everything is simply happy.
Perhaps I should just go back to OpenElec? My only trouble there is that it didn't seem I was getting the new features there, as it was always sticking to the older versions of Kodi... but I didn't try very hard to get Kodi updated either.
So, after some piddling around this weekend, I settled on the following:
Lubuntu 15.04
Kernel 4.4
Intel drivers from: https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads
Initially I was running Kodibuntu, which I had patched to 14.04 LTS release. I had come to realize that ALL of my deinterlacing woes were driver related. I had perused the web for drivers, and came upon the link above. It ONLY supports 15.x plus versions it appeared for Ubuntu. I honestly didn't try to find an alternative and moved straight to 15.10, so I may need to consider that if someone has a better suggestion (I honestly would like to run an LTS release but would also prefer to not have interlacing issues).
When I tried 15.10 I could not get the wireless to turn on. I had updated several different things trying to get the wireless to work, but no matter what suggestions I followed, the wnic would not turn on. I moved to 15.04, and the wnic was immediately present and working.
Kernel 4.4 upgrade (Install steps - http://linuxdaddy.com/blog/install-kernel-4-4-on-ubuntu/) was installed because the standard kernel in 15.04 (3.18 I believe) would not allow the use of HDMI audio. I had seen a few articles eluding to this, so I just went with the latest and greatest kernel, and HDMI audio immediately popped up.
Those Intel drivers more or less started this all. I did at one point run Kodi without them (can't remember on which version), but I had noticed the CPU was running steadily above 80%. After installing those drivers, I was more consistently seeing 20-40% CPU load during playback.
Only thing now is Lubuntu is not configured anywhere as nicely as Kodibuntu. When Kodi crashes, it crashes to the desktop. Using the remote CAN work if you're on the desktop and can highlight and click the Kodi shortcut. I did configure Kodi to auto start, so on that front a reboot is painless. I just need to optimize what happens if it crashes and I need to bring it back up. I'd prefer it just restart Kodi, but haven't dug into that yet.
-------------------------
Beyond my how to above, I am curious if anyone else out there has a better way. Thus far, I can now toggle deinterlacing settings without a crash, though in some of my testing with different version it may be a little iffy. I did get a crash at one point, but fairly sure it was on 15.10.
Just curious what others are doing. I have to say, I've definitely spent some time in Linux, but I really feel like they have a LONG way to go. I don't feel like I would see anywhere near this amount of grief if it was simply running Windows. I realize a good chunk of this is probably Intel's fault, and perhaps I wouldn't have all of this crap with an Nvidia card... I dunno. I just want to get this to a point where everything is simply happy.
Perhaps I should just go back to OpenElec? My only trouble there is that it didn't seem I was getting the new features there, as it was always sticking to the older versions of Kodi... but I didn't try very hard to get Kodi updated either.