Photos: Five OSes you can run on your Raspberry Pi 2
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OpenELEC
OpenELEC
OpenELEC is another well-regarded and capable media centre for the Raspberry Pi.
Like OSMC, OpenElec is also based on Kodi, an open source media player, so is similar in terms of its capabilities to play music, video and TV.
Installing OpenElec requires a little bit more manual work than OSMC. Start by browsing to the the Get OpenELEC page and finding the latest ARMv7 build, at present OpenELEC 5.0.3, and downloading the file labelled Diskimage.
Windows users should next follow the process for creating an operating system image outlined here, Linux users can follow the instructions here and MacOS X users should look here. Note if you’re following the instructions for Linux then you’ll want to download the tar file from the GetOpenELEC page, which is the one above the file labelled Diskimage.
OpenELEC seemed to work as well as OSMC at the core tasks expected of a media centre, playing the same video and audio files I tested on OSMC equally smoothly. However, navigating the menus in OpenELEC felt less jerky when using a mouse. Unlike for Raspbmc, I couldn’t find any guides for how to play video from premium services such as Amazon Instant Video, but that doesn’t mean it would necessarily be impossible.
Ubuntu 14.10 with LXDE
Ubuntu 14.10 with LXDE
A version of an Ubuntu desktop is already up and running on the Raspberry Pi 2.
The Pi 2 can run an Ubuntu 14.10 / Linaro 15.01 “developer” image with the LXDE desktop pre-installed.
This Ubuntu OS has been compiled to exploit the Pi 2’s new hardware, specifically its ARMv7 architecture, and my first impressions on using the web browser is that it’s at least equally responsive as the popular Raspbian operating system.
Instructions on how to install the image from Windows can be found here and from Linux you could use the Rasperry Pi Foundation general guide here.
Fedora 21
Fedora 21
Whereas first generation Raspberry Pi models had to use a custom remix of the Linux Fedora OS the Pi 2 is able to run the official release.
The OS, which favours integrating new technologies over a long support cycle, can be installed providing you’re comfortable working with Terminal commands in Linux.
The rather long and slightly involved list of instructions to get the latest version of Fedora, release 21, working can be found here. It requires you start by installing a version of the Raspbian OS released on 31 January 2015 or afterwards, which can be found here and as a torrent here.
