Android or LibreElec? And why?

[adime]

Hi Guys,

I understand that DroidBox comes with both options. While this is nice to have an option, running OpenElec takes away the flexibility which fully blown Android OS gives.

What your choice and why? I myself would not want to switch from one to the other and therefore sticking with Android and Kodi (17.4 now) there. And can't see the point of OpenElec mode at all.

Someone could explain reasoning behind this?

 

[Nigelar]

Technically it is Librelec not openelec but effectively it is the same thing.
Librelec is an OS built with Kodi in mind. Nothing else runs - none of the background stuff you get on android.
Therefore it can be faster and perform better for Kodi compared to Android.
On a powerful machine like the t8s plus v2 I would argue the difference is marginal.
At any rate I prefer the android side because I use a lot of the apps as well as Kodi.

 

[Bollocks77]

Ive always used Openelec - Now Librelec and never android on my box. I like the way it has no bloatware or anything running in the background.
Its only because I am not an app user - just addons for films and TV. Ive always found it easy to understand and tweak and easy to use. Fast also.
VPN installation is a doddle in Librelec which is also a bonus.
This is just my opinion to help you.
Dave

 

[ChrisM]

@adime https://droidbox.co.uk/blog/what-is-libreelec-why-does-it-matter/ and https://droidbox.co.uk/how-to/libreelec-basics/ might help

 

[8bitDev]

Hi Guys,

I understand that DroidBox comes with both options. While this is nice to have an option, running OpenElec takes away the flexibility which fully blown Android OS gives.

What your choice and why? I myself would not want to switch from one to the other and therefore sticking with Android and Kodi (17.4 now) there. And can't see the point of OpenElec mode at all.

Someone could explain reasoning behind this?

Hi

Think of the OpenELEC/LibreELEC as a modern DVD replacement.OS based purely for Kodi,to provide media playback with the online feature that allows streaming which puts device more advance than pure media players.While on the other hand device has a GNU/linux as a backend,so it is not bloated with android processes ,it runs faster,hardware settings are not depending on android so this leaves an option for a different hardware support,different type of system settings that may be more suitable for streaming purposes than on android.

If actual OS usage preferred android would be 1st choice to be used in most cases.Some like to switch back and forth.My advise is to see which one suits you the best and chose the one based on your personal preference.

Regards and have a nice day

 

[adime]

Cheers guys.

The main show stopper with LibreElec for me is inability to have both VPN on and access to local network. I believe that this is quite popular these days to have NAS device storing all your private content, pictures etc. Most popular VPN clients dont allow for tunnel splitting and therefore block local subnet access. With Android one can use OpenVPN for Android which allows for custom routing and allowing for both to be accessible at the same time (internet over VPN tunnel and local network without it).

Apart from that, i got all your points.

 

[RRaoD]

My main purpose of using the Droidbox is to connect to external HDDs with media for playing. I hardly use it for streaming purpose.

Initially the Android platform was not stable with frequent reboots. The two external HDDs on android were also not mapping to fixed drives on DBMC and Kodi. So most of the times the library was not accessible. I had to reboot a number of times to get correct drive mappings on Android for playback.

Another major problem with Android is that I could not access the external drives on my laptop over wi-fi. To copy any new media, I had to disconnect the external hdds and connect to laptop.

With LibreElec 8.0.1 / Kodi 17.1, all the above problems have vanished. This platform is very stable and the external hdds always map to correct drives upon restarts. So I can always play the local media easily.

I could also map the Droidbox internal storage and external hdds on my laptop. So management of data using my laptop has become very easy.

For me LibreElec/Kodi is the way to go.