Kodi

The Kodi Foundation released Kodi 18 'Leia' three months ago, bringing a number of big new features to the hugely popular home theater software, including a new Games area, updated and improved PVR backend clients, and a redesigned Music section.

A month later, a bug fix release candidate -- Kodi 18.1 -- arrived, and today there’s another new release available to install.

Do you own a Kodi box? The open source home theater software runs on all manner of hardware, from Windows, Mac and Linux systems, to Kodi boxes and the Amazon Fire TV Stick.

All of the many devices running Kodi have one thing in common though -- they aren’t official Kodi products, and they haven’t been made or licensed by the Kodi Foundation.

The Kodi Foundation has long been a supporter of open source software and today the developer announces that it has joined the Linux Foundation as an Associate Member.

The Linux Foundation is a non-profit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux and open source in general, and providing support for the open source community as well as sponsoring Linux creator Linus Torvalds, and maintaining the linux.com website.

Here's the deal, folks -- there are far too many Linux distributions out there nowadays. It used to bother me, but over time, I made peace with it. Look, it's the nature of the beast -- we will never have a single Linux distro, as it is impossible to come to any consensus. For instance, I prefer Fedora and GNOME, but at the same time, other people like Ubuntu and KDE. If you were to poll the Linux community you would see a very segmented group of people. And so, there are an obscene number of operating systems based on the open source Linux kernel.

When I saw a distro claiming to be stable while using the brand new Linux 5.0 kernel and being based on the not-yet-finalized Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo, I was intrigued. Surprisingly, despite it being around for years, it is an operating system I was not familiar with. Called "ExTiX," it seems to be developed by one man with a very no-frills website. In other words, I probably would not suggest using this thing as your main operating system for daily use. However, if you think it would be fun to play around with a Disco Dingo base and Linux kernel 5.0, it might be a fun weekend experiment. Not to mention, Kodi "Leia" comes pre-installed!

Yesterday, the Kodi Foundation rolled out a release candidate for Kodi 18.1, the first update for the newest version of its popular home theater software.

If you’ve been having problems with Kodi 18, then you’ll want to grab this as it comes with a long list of fixes and improvements.

It’s been two weeks since the Kodi Foundation rolled out the official stable release of Kodi 18 'Leia', the latest iteration of its hugely popular home theater software.

Kodi 18 offers lots of big changes, including a new Games area, updated and improved PVR backend clients, and a redesigned Music section. It's great, but if you’ve been having problems with the software, the latest update -- Kodi 18.1 RC -- might fix them for you.

Well, folks, it is finally here. After a rather lengthy beta period, LibreELEC 9.0 is available for download. Wait, are you not familiar with this specialized Linux-based operating system? Please know it is a lightweight OS that only exists to run Kodi -- the very popular open source media center. It provides an easy to use environment for consuming media, such as movies and music. This new version of LibreELEC is based on the recently released Kodi 18 Leia and can run on a lot of different hardware, including the very popular Raspberry Pi devices. Yes, with LibreELEC, you can turn a Pi (or many similar devices) into a powerful media box!

If you are dreading watching Super Bowl LIII later today, why not install and play around with LibreELEC 9.0 instead? Look, not everyone enjoys spectating sports -- don't let society make you feel bad about preferring to tinker with Linux than watch football. This new version of LibreELEC even has game emulation support, making it far more interesting than merely watching video and listening to music.

The Kodi Foundation pushed out the fifth and final Release Candidate of Kodi 18 two weeks ago, and after some minor bug fixes and improvements, the hugely popular cross-platform home theater software is finally judged ready for prime time.

If you’ve been waiting patiently for the official stable release of the new Kodi, the great news is you can download it now.

The full release of Kodi 18 is still likely a couple of weeks away, but today the kodi Foundation releases the fifth and (what should be) final release candidate.

RC5 comes with a number of important fixes.

If you were expecting the full and final release of Kodi 18 to arrive before the end of 2018, you’re going to be disappointed as it's now scheduled for very early 2019.

However, the Kodi Foundation has rolled out the fourth and final release candidate today which should tide you over nicely until then.

Kodi is an excellent open source media player, allowing the user to have an immersive experience with both music and video. While the software gets a bad reputation due to people using it for piracy, many folks only use it for legal media consumption. As more and more illegal Kodi add-on maintainers face legal trouble, and streaming services like Netflix and Hulu remain competitively priced, fewer folks may seek pirated content. In fact, the LibreELEC developers claim the "Kodi piracy scene continues to decline."

Not familiar with LibreELEC? Please know it is a Linux distribution that exists solely to run Kodi. It supports many hardware configurations, including traditional x86_64 for PC and ARM for devices like Raspberry Pi and WeTek. Following the release of Kodi 18 'Leia' RC3, LibreELEC 9.0 (8.95.1) Beta 1 becomes available for download. Its most significant change is a clever way to handle Kodi start up crashes due to buggy add-ons. After five consecutive crashes, the OS will boot without any Kodi add-ons, allowing the user to at least have a usable device.

We are edging ever closer to the full and final release of the next major version of Kodi, codenamed Leia.

Coming two weeks after RC2 arrived, the third release candidate drops today. Work is now underway on RC4, which does mean the full release likely won’t occur until January.

We are edging ever closer to the full and final release of the next big version of Kodi, codenamed Leia.

The second release candidate drops today, meaning the Kodi Foundation is still on target to release the final build this year.

It’s been two years in development, but the next big release for Kodi is nearly here.

Today the hugely popular home theater software hits a major milestone, with the arrival of the first Release Candidate for Kodi 18 'Leia' -- RC1. This release should be much more stable that the five previous betas, and the Kodi Foundation shares the following stats:

The recent roadmap for Kodi 18 'Leia' planned for four beta versions, followed by two release candidates, and then the finished thing.

That plan has gone slightly out of the window, however, as today the Kodi Foundation releases a fifth beta. This is the final beta release and fixes a number of issues.