LibreElec + other Linux stuff installed

sven5 · September 26, 2016 at 11:17 AM

Suppose I use LibreElec as a starting point (because watching stuff on TV is the primary use of my Pi) but I want to do a little development, run OpenVPN, an FTP server etc. Will I run into problems doing this, or can I SSH to the Pi and apt-get install whatever I want like on a regular Debian? If it's ok to do so, should I avoid upgrading any core OS components (ie avoid dist-upgrades etc)?

I ask because Kodi generally works fine on my current Raspbian install but occasionally I have trouble connecting, and the Pi rebooted itself once after it had not been used for 30 mins or so, during an attempt to connect to it via Kore (Android app). I figured if anything was going to work, it would be LibreElec (initially with nothing else installed, as a sanity check).

**escalade** · September 26, 2016 at 11:42 AM

No, LE is not Debian. It's an appliance like distribution built into a single squashfs file that's mounted read-only. It's designed to contain the bare essentials needed to run Kodi. You can only write to the /storage partition. There is the possibility of installing addons, but the availability of quality addons for the software you need may vary.

sven5 · September 26, 2016 at 11:50 AM

Quote from escalade

No, LE is not Debian. It's an appliance like distribution built into a single squashfs file that's mounted read-only. It's designed to contain the bare essentials needed to run Kodi. You can only write to the /storage partition. There is the possibility of installing addons, but the availability of quality addons for the software you need may vary.

Ok, thanks.

H0nch0 · September 27, 2016 at 6:27 PM

Quote from escalade

No, LE is not Debian. It's an appliance like distribution built into a single squashfs file that's mounted read-only. It's designed to contain the bare essentials needed to run Kodi. You can only write to the /storage partition. There is the possibility of installing addons, but the availability of quality addons for the software you need may vary.

can you not run things in a shell and achieve what he is looking for ?

if its not libreelec i seen a post about it it might have been weteks site
[hr]

Quote from sven5

Ok, thanks.

look into running stuff in a shell

**escalade** · September 27, 2016 at 7:18 PM

You can run any Linux binary you want in the shell of course, but there's no package manager and no software repositories with software built for LE. As mentioned, the root filesystem is read-only so you'll need to run it from /storage. If the software depends on stuff being in /usr or /etc then you're out of luck.

There is however the excellent Docker addon, which lets you run pretty much anything in a container.