What are the best operating systems for a Home Theatre PC?

11

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Considered

193

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Here’s the Deal

The Best 1 of 11 OptionsWhy?

Best operating systems for a Home Theatre PC	Price	Based On	Default Desktop Environment
94 OpenELEC	-	-	-
80 Geexbox	-	-	-
-- Kodibuntu	-	-	-
-- Arch Linux	Free	N/A	CLI
-- openSUSE Tumbleweed	-	N/A	-

OpenELEC

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Top Pro

Great support

It's very easy to find support for any problems you may run into with OpenELEC. See More

Top Con

The online installation guide is very convoluted

The online guide on installing OpenELEC is very convoluted and practically makes something very simple look like it's difficult. For example, the installation bundle comes with a script that is used to prepare the SD card, but then according to the guide you have to manually copy it to the device. While it can just tell you to wget the image and then write it to the target media in just a simple command. See More

Top Pro

Ease of use of XMBC that is easy to install

Very easy to setup through XBMC Live which is a very easy to setup distribution. See More

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Specs

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10 Other Options Considered

Geexbox

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Top Pro

Lightning fast booting

The booting process is very fast, it only has a brief splash screen between POST and when the XBMC menu loads up. See More

Top Con

Issues with the Wifi driver

There have been several issues reported related to the WiFi driver adapter when using Geexbox. See More

Top Pro

Simple installation

Installing Geexbox into a hard drive is very simple. Just select the install option from the boot menu and it will automatically take you to a screen where you can select your hard drive. It needs very little involvement and it's done in a matter of minutes. See More

Top Pro

Extremely portable

Geexbox has an ISO that is optimized to run on both USB and SD cards and of course all of them have the option to be installed on a hard drive. This makes them extremely portable, plus there are various ISOs for different systems which are about 150MB apiece. See More

Arch Linux

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Top Pro

Huge Repositories

Although Arch Linux only comes with around 10,000 packages, you can use the Arch User Repositories (AUR) which will add over 50,000 more packages. See More

Specs

Default Desktop Environment:CLI

Init-System:Systemd

Release Schedule:Rolling

Top Pro

Excellent package management with the AUR

The AUR is a repository with a very extensive catalogue of build/install scripts that are contributed by users. While these scripts are inherently less secure than conventional packages maintained by a distro's authors, it's still way easier to verify the security of install scripts than it would be to write them yourself. It's very usefull. See More

Top Pro

As slim or copious as you want it

Arch keeps its core repositories slim and free of unnecessary dependencies. At first installation only a bare system is set up. You can easily get the other applications through the package manager. The repositories are nearly as full as those of Ubuntu, while they are often more up to date. That way you don't have to waste time with software you don't need or want. See More

Top Pro

Fast and simple package management

Pacman has performance advantages over apt-get and yum in both database operations (thanks to being written for speed) and download times (by virtue of using better mirrors than other distributions tend to select by default). There are also fewer default repositories to download from, and all package management is combined into one tool instead of being split into dpkg, apt-get, and apt-cache like on Debian distros. See More

Top Pro

A package for almost everything

If you need to install something, chances are someone in the Arch community has already made a package for it. This makes it incredibly easy for you to install and maintain all of the non-media content on your computer. See More

Top Pro

Cutting edge rolling release

Arch Linux follows a rolling release model, which allows users to stay on the most up-to-date versions of the software they are using. See More

openSUSE Tumbleweed

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Specs

Init-System:Systemd

Release Schedule:Rolling release

GeckoLinux Rolling

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Specs

Default Desktop Environment:Cinnamon, XFCE, Gnome, Plasma, Mate, LXQt, "Barebones"

LinHES

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Top Pro

Seamless setup

The first time LinHES is launched, you are prompted by the configuration tool which is built using the same toolkit as MythTV itself. This allows for a seamless setup experience since LinHES automatically detects and configures the necessary settings correctly. This means that things like recording hardware, infrared receivers and remote controls are all configured automatically. See More

Top Con

Support only for 64-bit Intel architecture

The latest releases of LinHES only have support for 64-bit Intel architectures. While it's not worth it to worry about 32-bit Intel systems it's worth noting that the absence of an ARM release is problematic. See More

Top Pro

Great functionality out of the box

LinHES comes with a suite of programs already preconfigured to make it function as a media-centric appliance. Stuff like NFS and Samba are included for sharing files, Webmin and VNC provide remote administration capabilities, furthermore there are various remote system monitoring tools and packages for supporting file-transfer methods (one of them is Bittorrent). See More

LinuxMCE

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Top Pro

Easy installation

The installation wizard automatically finds and detects all your hardware details and adds the configurations accordingly. It also asks for your permission before each step and then carries on the next screen. Everything is completed in 5 minutes. See More

Top Con

Lots of bugs

Unfortunately LinuxMCE has some very annoying bugs. For example there are some things that will not work with the default settings, and that's a real downside for beginners. It's also rather complicated to get a weborbiter working. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Even with multiple features and options, LinuxMCE is still very easy to use; everything is very intuitive and dead simple to find your way around with everything being available through a point and click UI. See More

Top Pro

10 foot UI

Windows 8.1

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Top Pro

Hardware Compatibility

Windows has excellent x86-based compatibility, and has recently announced ARM compatibility as well. See More

Top Con

Expensive

You will need to purchase a Windows license. See More

Top Pro

Familiar Windows Interface

As opposed to unfamiliar and purpose-built Linux distros, Windows still reigns supreme for sheer usability and ease of use. See More

Top Con

Resource Intensive

In contrast to many dedicated solutions which can run on nearly anything, running a full Windows install requires decent hardware. This is not a lightweight solution. See More

Top Pro

Customizable UI

There are many that can be used to customize the MetroTile screen and add custom tiles. Then, by adding custom tiles you can configure them to open any application or web page that you need. For example: Netflix, HBOGo or Steam. See More

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