LibreELEC-RR 9.x [ Emulationstation | Retroarch | Pegasus | DolphinQT | Moonlight | Chrome | Spotify ]

    Hi Rob,

    the last "stable" official build is the april one. If you download whatever image to make a bootable usb to install the system, then searching for updates it should find the april one. The nightlies builds are intended only to update an already installed system with the previous versions, copying the tar file in the "update" share through smb. I'm using last nightly on generic system (Fujitsu ESPRIMO Q900, Intel core i5 system) and I can tell you can use it as stable.

    First of all, wow! This looks amazing but unfortunately I don't know the first thing about how to upgrade your build. I'd love to have Netflix, Spotify, emulation (I couldn't add games so that doesn't work either) and the standard kodi video add ons but I'm completely lost and I can't access or see any of them in the build. From a complete novice perspective, how do get these working step by step? Any help would be greatly appreciated

    Quote from Jjash

    First of all, wow! This looks amazing but unfortunately I don't know the first thing about how to upgrade your build. I'd love to have Netflix, Spotify, emulation (I couldn't add games so that doesn't work either) and the standard kodi video add ons but I'm completely lost and I can't access or see any of them in the build. From a complete novice perspective, how do get these working step by step? Any help would be greatly appreciated

    Well I've linked the latest nightlies in the sections which explains the updates and also linked the changelog which links to each new post in this thread which outlines important changes. This should be self explanatory. Just grab the latest img.gz file, burn it to an usb drive and install it on your Generic system. But there is a whole section in the LibreELEC wiki which covers such topics and should be read first. Installation [LibreELEC.wiki]

    Quote from andersos

    Escalade posted a new version of his build and he says it's now pure Wayland. Will RR be that too soon?

    TL:DR no.

    Well I've updated the Wayland packages & fixed audio output for the LibreELEC 9.x branches back in may with this PR [Wayland] updated all Wayland packages, dependencies & patches by 5schatten · Pull Request #3497 · LibreELEC/LibreELEC.tv · GitHub which made it possible to successfully compile and use Kodi. But from my tests back in these days using Wayland at the current state makes no sense. Kodi is currently not able to adjust the refresh rate when you use Wayland which means subpar video playback.

    The main problem is that Wayland uses EGL + OpenGL ES instead of GLX + OpenGL as outlined here Wayland so if we want to get rid of the X11 dependencies afaik we can't use OpenGL with the current Mesa 3D version. This also means that I would have to switch all libretro cores & emulators which now use OpenGL to OpenGL ES. In theory this won't be a big deal since most cores have GLES backends for SBCs and so building them just means to add some opts to the package files.

    Since Nvidia refused to use some common sense and use GBM/KMS but EGLStreams you could patch the Weston compositor Commits · 7.0-eglstreams · Miguel A Vico Moya / weston · GitLab and make it somewhat work but other compositors like Sway are not really motivated to support Nvidia GPUs Казань | В Казани будут судить граждан Китая за сбыт более тонны наркотиков - БезФормата - Новости beside that I've talked to some Kodi devs and according to them Kodi+EGLStreams is not supported as well.

    LibreELEC has it's own addon repo for all platforms so if you would like to install addons which use 3D functionality like a screensaver or music visualisation then you would pull in the addons build for Kodi+X11+OpenGL. Since we build Kodi+Wayland+OpenGL ES they would just fail because missing libs.

    But this is where the fun begins... most of the SBCs SoCs have only OpenGL ES 2.0 support and because of this most libretro cores come only with GLES 2.0 backends which are inferior to OpenGL 4.3 backends or there no OpenGL ES backend at all. So for example beetle-psx comes with a software renderer core, an OpenGL one & a Vulkan backend. If you use Wayland you won't be able to compile the OpenGL backend for beetle-psx anymore. Some cores like flycast feature an OpenGL & OpenGL ES backend but the OpenGL one has more features like OIT:
    Order-Independent Transparency · Issue #476 · reicast/reicast-emulator · GitHub
    Introducing BeetleDC OIT libretro core + updated BeetleDC regular core – Libretro

    which is not supported if you use the OpenGL ES backend and so you end up with missing effects, glitches or else.

    Finally not all emulators can be used without X11 as displayserver like PCSX2 which would need XWayland as additional dependency and so I would have to build Wayland and on top the whole X11 displayserver. And then again this wouldn't decrease the size or compile time because I would have to ship basically both Wayland+X11 wrapped in XWayland. There is a play! libretro core but to be honest this is no match for PCSX2 GitHub - libretro/Play-: Play! - PlayStation 2 Emulator especially if you have a look at the compatibility chart Play! - Development Log.

    So if we conclude:

    Pros:

    - Wayland (well does the enduser care at all?)

    Cons:

    - broken refresh rate switching in Kodi

    - broken Kodi addons

    - subpar graphics in some emulators (flycast) or completely missing 3D acceleration (beetle-psx)

    - broken PCSX2

    - missing Nvidia support

    Ask yourself how much sense it makes to switch over to Wayland if you don't build XWayland too & if you don't want to kill Nvidia support without any reason /shrug

    Quote from andersos

    yes at least Kodi will have to support it first. I first read about Wayland about 10 years ago. And still general support of it is so bad.

    Kodi does support Wayland but for example switching refresh rates works differently now. Afaik the compositor e.g. Weston handles this and there is no XrandR or else anymore where Kodi could talk to.

    Things start to move slowly... Fedora & Debian now ship Wayland as default displayserver but afaik basically always XWayland on top and so I guess it's not a problem to build OpenGL and avoid a lot of trouble. IIRC Ubuntu still wants to ship X11 for 20.04 LTS which says all how useful Wayland is for general usage.

    It's not like Wayland is bad supported nowadays but there are several corner cases which you have to keep in mind. If Mesa 3D OpenGL had not been entangled with X11 things would be different. Then Wayland could have also used OpenGL without pulling in the whole X11 stuff but still you could have used software which uses OpenGL.

    If all libretro cores would have a GLES 3.x backend & if all standalone emulators would have GLES 3.x backends and Wayland compatibility and if EGLStreams would be supported by Weston without breaking other stuff and if Kodi would support Wayland & EGLStream properly... well then it would be quite useful for these embedded builds.

    Always keep in mind which focus my build has. I try to keep LibreELEC compatibilty so I want to make sure that every user can use Kodi the same way as they used it with vanilla LibreELEC. And if you would like to play some games or else then my modifications kick in while they don't touch the usual LE foundation.

    If your focus is to create a distro focused on pure retro gaming like Lakka, Batocera, Retropie, Recalbox... (...) for a bartop or else then you don't have to care much about Kodi or the typical HTPC usage. And so you probably don't care about the average LibreELEC user /shrug

    Hey there.. I just did a fresh install for Generic x86_64. and straight from that upgraded to the latest Nightly. Since then Emulationstation, and Retroarch won't launch.. Spotify is fine, Chrome works. Only thing i changed was the Skin to Transparency!, but used the command lines eg: /usr/bin/frontend-emulationstation.py, etc. Any ideas?

    EDIT:.. i tried to run emulationstation through SSH... checked /storage/.emulationstation/es_log.txt

    got this:

    lvl2: EmulationStation - v2.9.0rp-dev, built Oct 7 2019 - 08:08:53

    lvl2: Creating window...

    lvl2: Created window successfully.

    lvl2: Checking available OpenGL extensions...

    lvl2: ARB_texture_non_power_of_two: ok

    lvl0: Error - File type unknown!

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 32 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 33 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 34 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 35 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 36 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 37 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 38 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 39 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 40 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 41 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 42 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 43 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 44 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 45 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 46 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 47 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 48 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 49 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 50 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 51 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 52 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

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    lvl0: Could not find appropriate font face for character 58 for font :/opensans_hebrew_condensed_regular.ttf

    Edited once, last by JimmyTheSnitch: New Info LOG (October 7, 2019 at 3:09 PM).

    5schatten

    escalade just now released a newer build of his pure Wayland Retroelec and he says this:

    "Kodi now runs on GBM/KMS (no X server, directly on the framebuffer like on ARM) - this is actually the future of LibreELEC as stated by the team, AFAIK it's also the only way to get HDR to work. Resolution and refresh rate switching working just fine."

    Just fyi

    Quote from andersos

    5schatten

    escalade just now released a newer build of his pure Wayland Retroelec and he says this:

    "Kodi now runs on GBM/KMS (no X server, directly on the framebuffer like on ARM) - this is actually the future of LibreELEC as stated by the team, AFAIK it's also the only way to get HDR to work. Resolution and refresh rate switching working just fine."

    Just fyi

    This is nothing new & the way Kodi 19 will handle it. But since Nvidia GPUs use EGLStreams you'll rip out support for them. Once there is a LE10 release then I'll switch over too but as long as it's LE9.x it makes no sense to make this dick move and kick out all Nvidia users.

    As I said the topic came up in may and because of this PR X11: remove vdpau and glx by lrusak · Pull Request #16057 · xbmc/xbmc · GitHub I updated & fixed Wayland in LE master in the first place.

    The usual toolkit stuff like Qt5 can use EGLFS & does not need a displayserver. Same goes for SDL2 which can hook up to KMS which is the way all my SBC builds & stuff like Pegasus frontend currently work. Working around Wayland and using KMS/GBM does not fix all other flaws I outlined unless you either set up your own addon repo or build Mesa 3D with OpenGL libs that don't depend on X11. And also Nvidia support won't magically appear just because you've ditched Wayland.

    Build RR-20191007-222bdfb | uploaded for Generic/RPi2 | Index of /nightly/

    • updated to latest LE 9.80 / master branch
    • updated Generic Linux kernel to 5.3.4 / 5.3.3 for RPi2
    • updated GStreamer to 1.16.1
    • updated glew to 2.2 RC2
    • updated Retroarch to v1.7.9 (v2)
    • updated moonlight-qt to v1.1.1
    • updated PPSSPP to v1.9.3
    • updated Mupen64plus-nx to fix libmali based projects
    • updated several libretro-cores
    • updated Citra, Dolphin & RPCS3
    Quote

    This is nothing new & the way Kodi 19 will handle it. But since Nvidia GPUs use EGLStreams you'll rip out support for them. Once there is a LE10 release then I'll switch over too but as long as it's LE9.x it makes no sense to make this dick move and kick out all Nvidia users.

    Well yeah, unless you simply add support for EGLStreams (not very hard).

    Quote

    As I said the topic came up in may and because of this PR X11: remove vdpau and glx by lrusak · Pull Request #16057 · xbmc/xbmc · GitHub I updated & fixed Wayland in LE master in the first place.

    Yep, you sent your PR with Wayland version bumps soon after I added them in my fork when I did testing for my XU4. Great job on bumping package versions as usual. I'm not using Weston so stop acting like you're some kind of Wayland pioneer. Where's your Wayland images? All I see is bitching.

    You don't want to use Wayland that's fine, no need to spread lies and piss on others work though.

    Quote from escalade

    Well yeah, unless you simply add support for EGLStreams (not very hard).


    Yep, you sent your PR with Wayland version bumps soon after I added them in my fork when I did testing for my XU4. Great job on bumping package versions as usual. I'm not using Weston so stop acting like you're some kind of Wayland pioneer. Where's your Wayland images? All I see is bitching.

    You don't want to use Wayland that's fine, no need to spread lies and piss on others work though.

    As always craving for attention? /shrug

    Your "version" bumps were well ehrm version bumps. And you didn't do anything to make it work for Generic systems because otherwise you would have needed several additional patches which you did not had or added. And you would know that if you had tried to compile a Generic image which would have just failed to compile.

    Same goes for Kodi which you did not patch to make audio properly work with Wayland. Because if you had a working build you would have recognized that there is no working audio without further patches. So please stop telling the world what you've done and what not. If it's so easy to add EGLStreams to Kodi then go on, do it. I mean well the XBMC dev I've talked to had their play with it and told it's broken but yeah I'm sure you'll add it by yourself. 8)

    Beside that... just stick to your thread and we're fine. I stated valid points and explained why >I< won't use Wayland and you either know I'm right or you have no clue which flaws came with switching the displayserver to Wayland.

    "Craving attention" because I won't tolerate you talking trash? The "average LE user" is asking you for Wayland support, and your response is to talk trash about my work? Don't know who's the attention craving one here.

    Yes, the version bumps were just that, version bumps, but you seem to be very proud of PR'ing them since you keep bringing them up. Anyways, feel free to try my Wayland image with working audio, refresh rate switching and everything I know you crave (you were very interested earlier I recall).

    Now put your money where your mouth is or simply shut up and keep doing whatever it is you are doing and leave me in peace.

    Quote from escalade

    Anyone can scroll up and see your own user bringing it up and your replies which include blatant lies and childish remarks. So yeah....

    This was the question & I've answered it:

    Quote from andersos

    Escalade posted a new version of his build and he says it's now pure Wayland. Will RR be that too soon?

    So again a user who probably keeps an I on both threads asked if my RR build will use Wayland anytime soon and I told him why I don't switch the displayserver and gave some details why I don't support it anytime soon. I told him which drawbacks my build would have if I use Wayland at the moment but this does not refer to your build in any way.

    If you think that stating flaws and post some links to sources about the topic is spreading "blatant lies and childish remarks" then this is fine. Correct me if I'm wrong but you have written a GLES 3.x backend for flycast or beetle-psx? You have rebuild all addons for GLES and created your own addon repo? You have patched Mesa 3D to build OpenGL without GLX symbols to avoid these problems? You already have added EGLStreams support to Kodi and found a way to run PCSX2 without X11/XWayland? You vastly improved play! to match PCSX2? You solved all these problems, did you?

    If you have then PR welcome and send it upstream to improve LibreELEC and other stuff for everyone. If you haven't maybe don't take your users for a fool and tell them which flaws and drawbacks the current Wayland / GBM / KMS implementations have. /shrug

    Anyway have fun with your build and keep your pecker up! :thumbup:

    ES tries to open a font which should be stored in /usr/config/emulationstation/resources so my first question is does it work if you use the Estuary skin?

    Can you post the links which you get after entering these commands?
    ls -la /usr/config/emulationstation/resources | paste

    ls -la /storage/.config/emulationstation/resources | paste

    Beside that try to launch ES by typing in emulationstation.start or systemctl start emulationstation.service if you use SSH and see if it starts fine then.