14 DAY TRIAL // The last days of 2016 brought us the OpenELEC 7.0 operating system for embedded devices, such as Raspberry Pi, which was based on the Kodi 16.1 open-source media center and allows users to transform those devices into HTPC (Home Theater PC) units.
Two weeks later, we're now seeing the first point release, OpenELEC 7.0.1, which is still based on Kodi 16.1, but a minor bugfix update attempting to address various problems with the installer on x86 (32-bit) systems, as well as an issue that could prevent the operating system from booting on SolidRun's CuBox-i4Pro mini PC.
Of course, the new build also contains various updated components, among which we can mention FLAC 1.3.2, libpng 1.6.28, libopenmpt 0.2.7386 Beta 20.3, libsamplerate 0.1.9, Enca 1.19, Cairo 1.14.8, libXi 1.7.8, SQLite 3.16.2, zlib 1.2.10, m4 1.4.18, Sed 4.3, BusyBox 1.26.1, GNU nano 2.7.4, libass 0.13.5, netbsd-curses 0.2.0, and e2fsprogs 1.43.3.
"OpenELEC 7.0 release contain a Kodi major version bump. If you are updating from OpenELEC 6.0 or earlier we strongly recommend you perform a full backup before performing a manual update. If you experience issues please perform a soft-reset to clear OpenELEC and Kodi settings," explained the developers.
Now powered by Linux kernel 4.4.41 LTS
OpenELEC 7.0 is one of those GNU/Linux distributions powered by the long-term supported Linux 4.4 kernel, and this point release is bundled with the recently released Linux 4.4.41 LTS kernel, which introduces a bunch of improvements to the Nouveau and Radeon open-source graphics drivers, as well as to the PowerPC architecture.
The complete changelog can be found here, for tech-savvy users who want to know what exactly was changed in OpenELEC 7.0.1. The generic ISO image is now available for download from our website, and you should also visit the distribution's homepage to download OpenELEC 7.0.1 for other supported platforms.
