No matter if you're trying to recycle an old computer, give a Raspberry Pi a better use, or simply experiment with multimedia files, OpenELEC is a solid choice as a general platform. Based on the Kodi player (formerly XBMC), OpenELEC has everything you need to start playing series and movies effortlessly. Before the end of the year, its developers released the new stable version 7.0, which includes multiple updates to its internal modules.
The concept of an HTPC may have lost a bit of traction against the explosion of online content and the impressive processing power found in some mobile devices, but the truth is that many users feel comfortable with the idea of concentrating their multimedia files on a computer that manages everything. Personally, I always preferred creating 'torrent boxes' connected to a local network and then playing series and movies with each terminal; however, the ritual of sitting in front of the television and watching things there remains very powerful. Beyond the variables that may arise, what we need is a software platform up to the circumstances, and on the list appears OpenELEC.
The first time we crossed swords with OpenELEC was in 2014, when XBMC changed its name to Kodi, but the original development goes much further back (in 2011 the first major version was published). The latest news about OpenELEC is the formal release of its version 7.0. After having spent some time as a beta, OpenELEC 7.0 includes WeTek Core hardware support, updates to the Linux kernel (4.4), ALSA, GCC, Python, systemd, xorg-server, and mesa, new drivers for WiFi and video chips (with Intel and AMD at the lead), the union of modern Nvidia drivers with 'legacy' ones to offer support with a single build, the jump of Kodi to version 16.1, Bluetooth Audio compatibility, and the return of OpenVPN.
OpenELEC 7.0 provides images compatible with x86 systems, the aforementioned WeTek Core and WeTek Play, Freescale i.MX6 platforms, and the Raspberry Pi in all its versions. OpenELEC is quite reasonable in terms of requirements for the x86 version. A full installation should not exceed 125 megabytes, and it works very well on flash drives. If there's a spare PC or Raspberry Pi at home, why not give it a try?
