CoreELEC is a lightweight ‘Just enough OS’ Linux distribution designed to turn compatible Amlogic-based set-top boxes and single-board computers into dedicated Kodi media centres.
A minor fork of LibreELEC, it pares the operating system back to the components required for media playback, providing an appliance-style environment rather than a general-purpose desktop. It targets ARM hardware and supports both manufacturer-backed devices and a broad range of generic Amlogic systems. CoreELEC can be run from removable media, allowing the existing Android installation on many devices to remain intact.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Provides hardware-accelerated decoding for a broad selection of formats, including H.264, H.265, VP9 and AV1 where supported by the SoC.
- Handles HDR, HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG output, with Dolby Vision support available on selected Amlogic hardware.
- Supports passthrough of multichannel and lossless audio formats including Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD MA and DTS:X.
- Offers separate Amlogic-ng, Amlogic-ne and Amlogic-no builds to cover different generations of Amlogic hardware and vendor kernels.
- Uses device-tree files to match generic installation images with the hardware configuration of supported boards and TV boxes.
- Can boot from microSD cards or USB flash drives, with documented migration to eMMC for compatible devices.
- Includes configuration and troubleshooting facilities for HDMI-CEC, displays, audio, networking and remote controls.
- Provides SSH access, backup facilities, system-log collection and file-transfer documentation for administration and troubleshooting.
- Supports stable releases alongside nightly builds, with manual updates available through the dedicated update directory.
| Working state: | Active |
| Desktop: | - |
| Init Software: | systemd |
| Package Management: | - |
| Release Model: | Fixed |
| Platforms: | ARM, AArch64 |
| Home Page: | coreelec.org |
| Developer: | Team CoreELEC |
| This article is part of our Big List of Active Linux Distributions. |
What's a Linux distribution ("distro")? |
| A distro provides the user with a desktop environment, preloaded applications, and ways to update and maintain the system. Each distro makes different choices, deciding which open source projects to install and provides custom written programs. They can have different philosophies. Some distros are intended for desktop computers, some for servers without a graphical interface, and others for special uses. Because Linux is an open source operating system, combinations of software vary between Linux distros. |
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