"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." (Robert A. Heinlein)

Sunday 10 September 2017

KODI on RetroPie (and Raspberry Pi)

I’m not what you’d call a hard gamer ... probably I’m not a gamer at all. So after a little playing with RetroPie, and the few ROM files I managed to find, I continued with experimenting with available RetroPie “ports”.
RetroPie ports are a plug-in system that usually allow you to add open source games or additional emulation engine to RetroPie interface. The “KODI” port instead allow you to install and start from RetroPie interface a full featured media manager giving your retro-computing machine an effective “double life”.

KODI Media Manager

KODI, previously known as XBMC is a media manager software available for various Linux flavours. On the Raspberry it's available both as installation package and as stand alone distribution. KODI is of course capable of playing music and video both stored locally on a remote DLNA source. In addition KODI allows installing a great variety of add-on modules to display, for example, YouTube videos or whether news.

Installing KODI “port”

KODI can be installed and integrated with RetroPie interface from RetroPie set-up script.
sudo RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh
I selected the “Manage packages” menu, then the “Optional packages” one at last I selected “KODI” package in packages list.
Then the installation script started and I only hat to patiently wait its conclusion.