Having recently upgraded my DIY edition to a Ryzen 7, I’m left with my old motherboard sitting around. I’d like to use it as a media PC (bought the Cooler Master case for it). However, I’m having a bit of trouble finding an appropriate OS to install on it. I’ve been trying to get LibreElec installed but it only has a Windows CD creator and that seems very buggy; kind of looks like support for it is infrequent, if not altogether abandoned.
What OS have others used for this? Ideally I’d like to be able to:
use a standard universal television remote with it;
access Netflix, Amazon Prime, and YouTube; and also,
have access to a local NAS for additional movies, television, music, and such.
If anyone happens to have anything like a comprehensive, Framework-relevant installation guide for their OS of choice that’d be a handy bonus.
Something to keep in mind, is that the current recommendation for the Kernel on a Linux install for the 11th gen is 6.1 or greater. (per the GitHub on Linux installs).
But for the 2nd 2 points, basically anything with a modern browser and running something like Kodi on-top will work well for this purpose.
On the front of using a standard television remote… eARC ‘might’ play a role, but I’ve not seen anything regarding the support of eARC on the framework laptops. Even then, you’re mainly talking turning the PC on with the TV, and adjusting system volume with the TV remote.
Now, there ‘are’ PC specific remotes that work alright, I have a no-name one from like 2016 that has motion capture and works pretty well. Think it was an earlier rendition of the one linked below… Worked well for KODI and EMBY and any other basic WebUI (like Hulu, or Netflix), the Typing works but is not ideal…
Edit: Removed, and re-posted to remove the incorrect reply.
if you’re comfortable with linux the distro is irrelevant, you can install whichever thing and then dockerise whatever you need, plenty of tutorials out there. you can either go down the full k8s rabbithole using the NAS as storage for both the node(s) and the media, or stop somewhere in between, e.g. debian on the framework mobo, install jellyfin / plex via either package managers or (better) docker.
i wouldn’t recommend interacting directly with the computer with a remote (the less you actually interact with it, the better) and just use it to stream stuff to a TV or a chromecast via native apps.
Is the 11th gen going to be an HTPC client or also the NAS? Because I don’t see a reason you couldn’t attach some Thunderbolt hard drive enclosures to it and an Ethernet adapter to get networking going. Have you considered a Bluetooth game controller? Like Xbox or PS5 for controlling the HTPC?
As I understand it, LibreElec is basically that all nicely packaged up. I was hoping to find something along those lines but I suspect I’m out of luck there. Any recommendations for a tiny Linux distro?
Honestly Linux is a great solution for this, BUT if you want maximum hardware compatibility particularly in output and audio then I would recommend going with Windows 10 or 11 in conjunction with WPD, Portmaster, and WUMgr.
Everything will just work and you can focus on the usage part of the thing.
This is not bad mouthing Linux either. You can get it working pretty easily as well but things tend to break when updating and you need to be willing to handle that.
But the Kodi forum should have members who had been in the same situation as you are now; they should know about pitfalls and be able to give good advice and recommendations.
Re Linux breaks: Postpone major upgrades until the next few minor versions are out. I.E., not jump to version X, but wait for X.0.3 or so, or even X.1.3.
My go-to lightweight linux distro is lubuntu, but i’m not even sure you’d need a lightweight distro given that it is an 11th gen intel cpu. I say go with what you’re most comfortable with
Last time I looked at doing something like this, I’m pretty sure I settled on Jellyfin as both server and client and I was going to go with FreeNAS as the OS because ZFS. Ubuntu also comes with ZFS and it going to be much easier to understand. Like others said, the OS doesn’t matter as much because you can put everything in docker.