LeMaker has recently released LeMedia, a Linux distribution based on Kodi 15.2 and Debian Jessie for their Guitar board powered by Actions Semi S500 quad core Cortex A9 processor, also found in Lemon Pi, ActDuino-S500 and Roseapple Pi boards.
The good news is that H.264 and MPEG4 hardware video decoding is implemented, as well as PowerVR SGX544 GPU 3D acceleration. This is an early version and while IR receiver, WiFi, HDMI and LCD output, and audio are working, the company explained that HDMI support may be flaky, USB 3.0 speed is not optimal, and touchscreen support had to be disabled. They also included a “LeMedia Settings” in the image to have a similar experience as “RaspBMC Settings”.
The images for booting from SD card or eMMC can be downloaded here. It’s quite likely they only work on LeMaker Guitar board, and I could not find the Linux 3.10.37 kernel, nor LeMedia source code on LeMaker Github’s acccount. However, they did push an hardware pack for S500 including a simple rootfs, the Linux kernel modules, and a bootloader yesterday, while XApple (or XApp-le) community, which mostly works on Roseapple Pi board, pushed U-boot and Linux source code on Github recently.
Thanks to Harley for the tip.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
Support CNX Software! Donate via cryptocurrencies, become a Patron on Patreon, or purchase goods on Amazon or Aliexpress
