Formerly /u/neoKushan on reddit

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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Kushan@lemmy.worldtoLinux@lemmy.mlAnyone using OSMC
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    10 days ago

    I used OSMC for years going back to when it was still raspbmc, got the first Vero and then the 4k model.

    They were never perfect and hassle free, a lot of which I put down to Kodi itself. I love the idea of Kodi, but the base interface is lacking (especially when you have a big collection) and most of the fancy front-ends / skins I tried would run too slow and once again bring back the shoddy TV experience I was trying to avoid. It also does not support streaming services like Netflix or Disney+ in any usable capacity. Kodi has a rich add-on ecosystem, which usually means you can plug some gaps but the add-ons have a habit of just breaking out of the blue or during major upgrades. I’ve had to have Kodi index my library so many times that I got sick of it ruining film night.

    Eventually I bought an Nvidia shield, still using Kodi at first but switching between Plex, jellyfin and emby until I settled on emby for my local content. Being able to use other streaming services was a bonus and the hardware was good enough that it doesn’t feel sluggish.

    You can also install 3rd party apps like smart tube for an excellent YouTube experience (and now my preferred way to watch YouTube).

    The shield is starting to show it’s age big time (it doesn’t support HDR on YouTube, for example) but sadly outside of the USA there isn’t really any devices that match or beat it - you keep hearing about that Wal-Mart device being brilliant but that’s US only.

    So in short, get a good android TV box for the best experience and the most options.

















  • I’m old enough to remember the SVN days (he’ll, even the CVS and…dare I say it… source safe days).

    Git is fantastic. It’s pretty universally uses because it’s the best dvcs out there and it’s free. It wipes the pants with the likes of mercurial.

    In certain industries (such as gaming) there’s still a strong hold by perforce but we can ignore that as it’s proprietary and a bit specialised.

    Anyway, as great as git is for making things easier and cleaner when dealing with distributed development, it by no means makes something impossible “possible” - it just makes it a hell of a lot easier.

    The Linux kernel on the other hand enabled a lot of impossible things. Remember back in the day there wasn’t anything free and open source in the operating system world, it was all proprietary and licensed. If you wanted to create your own operating system, you basically had no option but to spend a fortune either writing your own kernel or licensing someone else’s (and the licensing part means you cannot distribute it for free).

    The fact that the FSF has always wanted to write their own OS and never been able to achieve it without the Linux Kernel, in spite of them essentially writing “everything else” that makes up an operating system, shows just how nontrivial this is.