Intel NUC NUC8i3BEH - which distro?

1st Official Post

    Hi guys,

    My Intel NUC NUC8i3BEH (i3, HD 655) is about to arrive in few days.

    As I want to use it for Kodi and other stuff I wonder which LibreELEC distro should I put it? Maybe someone already tested/installed succesfully a distro on this NUC....

    Also 2 additional questions:

    Q1: there is a way to have optical out from NUC to my soundbar?

    Q2: did LibreELEC supports dual boot?

    I will have 2 SSDs on my NUC and initially I thought to install a Linux distro + Kodi in order to have access to Docker but then after I found LibreELEC - maybe to install into 1 SSD and Linux Distro on the other SSD

    Thanks

    Edited once, last by katanel (March 17, 2020 at 8:31 AM).

    • Official Post
    Quote from katanel

    and other stuff

    It's kinda important that you know exactly what to expect from a computer AND its operating system.

    So what other plans do you have in mind?

    1) Linux supports various audio methods. As long as your soundbar is not too "exotic", things should work(tm).

    2) LibreELEC can be used in multiple boot environments. I have a PC that multi-boots into Win10/Ubuntu/2xLibreELEC/other stuff. The Linux grub bootloader works best for me. Keeping OS'es on separate drives (SSDs) is best IMO because of making full disk images (e.g. Clonezilla).

    Quote from Klojum

    It's kinda important that you know exactly what to expect from a computer AND its operating system.

    So what other plans do you have in mind?

    1) Linux supports various audio methods. As long as your soundbar is not too "exotic", things should work(tm).

    2) LibreELEC can be used in multiple boot environments. I have a PC that multi-boots into Win10/Ubuntu/2xLibreELEC/other stuff. The Linux grub bootloader works best for me. Keeping OS'es on separate drives (SSDs) is best IMO because of making full disk images (e.g. Clonezilla).

    1) It was more like a hardware question here - as I don't see any optical output on Intel NUC or...there is a way ? - I do have a Bose Soundbar which accepts optical input or HDMI ARC

    2) There is a particular distro which works well with this i3, HD 650 graphics...?

    I've got the i5 version, it should work just fine with 9.2.0 Generic. As always with every new Intel generation, there's a lot of improvements in the mainline kernel so I would recommend you go with a nightly like Milhouse's for example. I maintain an emulator oriented mini-fork as well, which offers bleeding edge components (like kernel/mesa) with latest stable Kodi. Might not be 100% compatible with generic LibreELEC though. You should add i915.enable_guc=2 to the kernel commandline in /flash/syslinux.cfg for this NUC. If you have HDMI ARC there is no need for optical, it works regardless of OS.

    If you like the simplicity and speed of LibreELEC there isn't really any need for another distro. Using the Docker addon you could run an entire desktop on LE's X server if you so wish, the only limitations are the time you are willing to spend on it.

    escalade - thanks for your answer

    Does the Docker add-on have any constraints regardless cpu, memory, disk/partitions, ports access?

    As developer I want to use Docker for several home projects :)


    I'm torn between:

    Config 1:

    SSD 1 - LibreELEC, SSD 2 (or partition 2) - run Docker addon of LibreELEC

    Config 2:

    SSD 1- LibreELEC

    SSD 2 - full distro Linux

    Additional question (hardware): does the XBox remote (supported by Intel NUC) work fine in LibreELEC?