GeeXboX

This ain’t news to anyone now cause, as announced to last ELC, the GeeXboX project is now focusing most of its efforts to support ARM devices and I’m glad to say that we made impressive improvements in this area. First, let’s be realistic, there are hundreds of different SoCs and ARM devices and it’s definitely not possible to support them all as one would do on x86 computers. Right now, we’ve decided to focus on OMAP3 from Texas Instruments. Why so ? That’s easy: it features nearly everything one can want to build a Media Center: an ARMv7 CPU (Cortex-A8), an OpenGL|ES compatible GPU (PowerVR SGX 530) and a 720p H.264 hardware capable decoding DSP. This SoC is also mature and has an impressive support from community. As a consequence, thanks to a few sponsors (CELF), the revenues from Google AdSense and generous donations, we’ve been able to get access to one BeagleBoard, 3 IGEPv2 boards and a TouchBook.

These brand new shiny toys really make wonders and thanks to a very hard labor, I’m proud to say that GeeXboX current development tree is now running fine out there. Of course, there are still many rooms for improvements but the basics are there and we’ve been able to run Enna on it by this week. While now working out of the box on these devices, we’re still using fully software methods (i.e. no DSP or GPU) which are, by definition, resources eating. But at least all of the infrastructure work has been done and we’ll now be able to focus on these peripherals.

When this will be achieved, we’ll have a complete out-of-the-box multimedia solution for very low-end devices that one can use to drive is Set-Top-Box. Speaking of that, we’ve decided to work, in the months to come, to the hardware design of our own motherboard (obviously based on ARM SoC), as to provide a full-featured STB, with Open Software and Open Hardware. More details will be available in the weeks to come.

In the long term, we also intend to support as much ARM chips as possible. I originally wanted to target at least ARMv7 architecture, due to its impressive NEON SIMD instructions set, but many devices still being based on ARMv5, we might possibly do some porting efforts. With a bit of luck (and very likely depending on Texas Instruments), we might also support OMAP4 architecture by end of the year (Cortex-A9, PowerVR SGX 540 and 1080p-capable DSP) and why not nVidia Tegra2. This can however only be done if we managed to get access to the hardware. So any interested developer or if you know any way to get sponsored some boards, feel free to join or to contact us at least.

Regarding GeeXboX itself, we also made very deep changes in the toolchain and our build system. I’ll make some announcement when the time will come but you may soon expect to have a impressively easy cross-compilation framework, with the possibility to create additional components through our SDK and package the whole thing using OPKG, which we’ll be using to have a fully packaged-based and upgradeable multimedia distribution.

So stay tuned

The CE Linux Forum organized the ELC (Embedded Linux Conference) 2010 session at San Francisco from 12th to 14th April. I had a 1h speaking timeslot where I presented GeeXboX, Enna, libplayer and libvalhalla. This was also followed by a 2 hours demo session where Davide and myself presented Enna on netbooks + Nokia N900 to various attendees and enterprises.

For interested people, my slides are available at:
http://elinux.org/images/0/03/ELC_2010_-_BZ_-_GeeXboX_Enna_-_Embedded_Media_Center.pdf

And the video will be posted when available.

Those interested in all ELC conferences might take a look at:
http://elinux.org/ELC_2010_Presentations

So, what happened meanwhile this event ?

GeeXboX and Enna received a pretty good feedback from both the people attending the presentation than the demo. We also managed to draw contacts with many interesting people from various companies: Nokia, Texas Instruments, Samsung, Numonyx, AlwaysInnovating …

A lot of questions were raised, a few remarks too and in many cases, people had the same remarks or feelings (I do personally share many of them btw).

• Most of the people were impressed by Enna on Nokia N900. Actually, most of people are interested by Enna on embedded devices (but that’s somehow normal due to expected audience), way more than on regular PC. Most people want it to run on ARM targets.

• People were impressed by the very low footprint required. Numonyx folks consider it very useful with XIP approach.

• Many people where very interested by libplayer actually. Its capability to allow user choose which backend to use seems to be very popular. Though everyone requested a GStreamer backend. I’m currently writing it but it’s definitely the way to go if we really intend to address embedded devices and enterprise-grade devices. It’s the only way to correctly handle DSPs atm.

• Executives from Samsung were really interested by Enna itself. Actually, they knew about it before joining the stand. They wanted to know what was the difference with the enna from Enlightenment project (memo: Samsung hired the EFL main developer). They were happy to know that our Enna is the same as the one from E project. They also are very interested in it for their mobile phones (but not for the Bada project, or so they said) but were very disappointed by its very slow response time on N900. For the record N900 is running in software_x11_16 currently, the OpenGL|ES renderer being barely faster (if not slower) and produces garbage. I recalled them that they hire the man responsible of Evas and the renderers. Though it’s true and I confirm their feeling. I consider Enna as really really slow to draw anything (both on embedded devices and x86). No idea if its Evas issues or Enna bottleneck for we have slowdown issues. Though, from the expedite tests I did on N900, I’m disappointed by Evas performances.

• People loved libvalhalla (or what it provides) and the capability to retrieve all metadata was really welcomed.

• The biggest reproach done to Enna was the use of EFL instead of QT. Both individuals and enterprises (including Nokia obviously, but not Samsung, obviously too would have recommended to use QT for its stabilized and documented API. The no-relases behavior, lack of documentation and unstable API of EFL was stated countless of times. Nokia shown us some small apps written using their new QML langage (EFL Edje equivalent) which is completely interpreted (but can be compiled) and I have to say the results were impressing. At first they have all necessary widgets (i.e. a completed Elementary) we need and the performances (on a regular PC at least) truely outcomes the ones of Evas-based applications (again while being interpreted). I asked us about OpenGL|ES performances and benchmarks (as it’s now my main point of interest) but they have no numbers to be provided (they however confirmed it to work fine). A lot of people also told us they would consider helping the project if it was QT written.

Good news everyone ! I recently ‘ve been sponsored Nokia N900 phone by CELF, this awesome pro-Linux foundation that already used to sponsor me DLNA specifications a few years back. The idea of course was to start porting our software to ARM-based devices. Nokia N900 phone is a great toy. It features an OMAP3 SoC (ARM Cortex-A8 CPU associated with an SGX GPU that can handle OpenGL|ES) and is running Maemo 5 distribution (soon to be replaced by Meego), a Debian-derivated by Nokia. The idea behind all this of course was to port Enna (and its associated dependencies, i.e. libplayer, libnfo and libvalhalla) on this system and optimize the hell out of it

This is now done. Kudos to myself :p

There are still room for way more optimizations. Enna has been ported, that’s a fact. The underlying dependencies can however be improved a lot. The EFL can use either X11 or OpenGL for output. Right now, we’re still using plain X11. It’s not really optimized but I’m not yet fully convinced of the OpenGL|ES port so it’ll stay this way for a still a while. Also, libplayer on N900 has been configured to use MPlayer. While this perfectly works, it uses CPU (with all possible ARM VFP and NEON optimizations though) for software decoding instead of using the hardware DSP. As a result, it can decode much more audio and video formats than the default embedded played allows to, but it’s also slower. I have multiple possibilities to make use of this DSP (through Maemo MAFW video API or using OpenMAX) and have not yet settled my choice.

Anyhow, everyone should now be able to try out out Enna v0.4.0 on his phone, provided he has one Nokia N900 of course

In order to install it, go to Package Manager and add a new repository:

Name: GeeXboX

URL: http://packages.geexbox.org

Distribution: fremantle

Component: main

Proceed with packages database update and then:

• Hit the Download icon.
• Choose Multimedia application.
• Select Enna Media Center.

That’s it. I hope you’ll enjoy it

It’s already been one month since 2.0-alpha1 release so here’s alpha2. This release fixes a lot of bugs that have been encountered by our users on this first 2.x series preview.

• Normalize LIRC configuration by providing generic binding for each and every remote control.
• Initial port to ARM architecture: stay tuned, it’s gonna be awesome news soon
• Restoration of UPnP/DLNA feature with a brand new stack.
• Restoration of internationalization support.
• Upgrade of nVidia drivers: proprietary, legacy one and addition of Nouveau.
• Add Kernel Mode Settings (KMS) for ATI/Intel/nVidia drivers.
• Upgrade to Linux 2.6.33 kernel.
• Fix LiveCD and Win32 installers, you can now install GeeXboX to disk again.
• Fix OGG files playback issue.
• Upgrade Enna to future upcoming 0.5.0 release, including hundreds of bug fixes and new features such as Weather enhancements, GeoIP localization, UPnP support, SHOUTcast and Podcast streaming.

Generator is still not yet ready for prime-time but we’re working on it. That said, feel free to download this new 2.0-alpha2 release. It had been made available for i386 and x86_64 computers. The light and full sources of this release obviously are available too.

You can also install it without further disk partitionning through the Windows installer.

This has been announced for years but we’re finally stepping forward to the so long awaited for 2.0 release of GeeXboX. Today, we’re proud to let you have a first try at this new version, based on the Enna Media Center application that we have developed.

Enna is a standalone application that one can use on any Linux distribution (soon to be available for MacOSX and Windows users, who knows …) that replaces the old and dying MPlayer OSD interface we’ve been using for so long. The GeeXboX distribution you all know about will then become the Enna Live-CD project, but with all optimizations, configuration and tweakings that one may be able to do on his regular computer.

With Enna, GeeXboX now looks promising again, with this new shiny look and feel interface. Also being much more nicer, Enna allows us to add so many new features that you all were waiting for (check out the Enna website for that) so future looks bright again.

Also, Enna has been designed to be simple and intuitive to be used. It can be controlled either through keyboard, mouse or remote control. Mouse support is quite new in GeeXboX but its usage is kinda trivial. As for keyboard, we have tried to make usable with as few keys as possible. As a result, one can control Enna the following way:

• Arrows: used to navigate between the different menu lists.
• Enter: used to validate your selection.
• Backspace: used to cancel or browse back to previous menu.
• Escape: if you ever wanna stop Enna (and shutdown GeeXboX as well).

As you might have understood, Enna and GeeXboX v2.x design is the result of years of development and deep architectural changes. Things now are getting stabilized but we’re still lacking of manpower to enhance it the way we’d like it to be. So if you’re a Linux developer, feel free to join our team. If you’re interested in GeeXboX v2.x architecture, you’d be glad to know that it was presented to FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting) a week ago and both slides and video are available.

We all hope you’ll enjoy this first alpha release of GeeXboX 2.x series. Though, keep in mind that, as the name suggests, it’s an alpha version only. This means that unfortunately, it still suffers a lot of bugs and many regressions towards 1.x series. The availability of final stable release over requires you to test it the most you can, reporting any trouble one can find.

As a consequence, some stuff are already know to be broken or missing:

• Some features are disabled, including TV and netstreams support.
• Generator needs a huge rewrite and will be part of alpha2 release only, sorry folks.
• Audio OGG files are seen as video files (!!) and playing them back results in a black screen with uncontrollable Enna (you’ve warned).
• The framebuffer-based console mode has been disabled until being fixed. HDTV mode only (i.e. using X.Org server) is supported in this version.

On the bright side, new features have been added or enabled by default:

• The proprietary nVidia video driver has been integrated. Every nVidia GPU should now be supported. With those cards, Enna should also be using its OpenGL rendering engine, providing a smooth rendering.
• The VDPAU hardware decoding engine has been integrated. If you’re the lucky owner of an nVidia card higher than GF8800 series, than you should be able to decode MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (i.e. DivX), H.264 and VC-1 streams using your video card, offloading your CPU. This of course includes ION-based Set-Top-Boxes that are now able to decode 1080p videos.
• For non-nVidia users, the multi-threaded decoding feature now has been enabled by default. MPlayer will then uses all of your CPU’s cores to do software video decoding.

In order to allow us to enhance GeeXboX to our users’ configuration, we’ve also setup a statistics utility that provides us with some information regarding your hardware configuration. It has been enabled by default but we know that it can be intrusive for some users. So if you’re not willing to provide these info (CPU model, amount of memory RAM, video board type, and such …), you can disable it by adding nostats to the boot command-line.

That said, feel free to download our new 2.0-alpha1 release. It had been made available for i386 and x86_64 computers. The light and full sources of this release obviously are available too.

[UPDATE] The video presentation already was made available by FOSDEM organizers. Hope you’ll enjoy it more than I do

It’s been a couple days only but FOSDEM 2010 already is long gone As expected though, I’ve been able to present GeeXboX and Enna to a nearly full (ok, half only :-p ) room of developers and hackers. For those of you who couldn’t attend to the presentation or those who’d like to see it again or more carefully, the slides now are available on our website. Let’s just say that I was pretty proud making this conference and that the results were quite enthusiastic. Indeed, GeeXboX, Enna, and all of its associated libraries (libplayer, libvalhalla …) have catch attention of a lot of people, including some from Open Embedded, VideoLAN (VLC) and even Nokia. This will result to various new actions that I’ll gladly share with you at expected time. Let’s just say that the best is yet to come

Also, as it’s now an usual tradition, please enjoy some photo of our current development team (the ones that manage to come at least) at FOSDEM 2010.

From upper left to bottom right: Alexis Saettler, Nicolas Aguirre, Benjamin Zores, Matthias Hölzer, Fabien Brisset and Davide Cavalca.

So next week (6th-7th February 2010) at Brussels takes place the Free & Open Source Software Developers Meeting (a.k.a. as FOSDEM). We manage to get lucky enough to get granted a short time-slot to present GeeXboX and Enna. So if you’re interested in Enna and you’re going to FOSDEM, don’t miss the GeeXboX: An Introduction to Enna Media Center lightning talk at 18h20 on Saturday 6th. Those of you who won’t be able to attend (let’s be realistic, we’re talking about 99% of you) will have to wait a few days more as I’ll put the slides (and potentially video of the talk) on-line after FOSDEM.

It was kinda hard and efforts were countless, but GeeXboX team is proud to announce the very stable release of Enna Media Center. After months of development, this brand new user interface finally has landed. Enna is available as a standalone application for all modern GNU/Linux based distributions (and already packaged for Ubuntu 9.10) and will, obviously, be part of GeeXboX v2.0 release. Speaking of which, the hardest part now being behind us, the first Alpha1 release of GeeXboX v2 is due to this month.

In the mean time, feel free to test Enna on your regular PC and we really hope you’ll enjoy using it. More information are of course available on Enna website.

Those of you who follow GeeXboX development carefully already heard about the project Enna . It’s a Media Center project, based on Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL), that has been developed by the GeeXboX team members. Enna is a standalone application, that can be run on any Linux distribution, GeeXboX LiveCD being one of them and that will be the major feature of upcoming v2.0.

As a convenience (and because some users do not want to use the LiveCD distribution), Enna will be made available for others than GeeXboX (first release is expected pretty soon). Enna being a graphical interface only, the team has developed many other libraries that are used by Enna and for which initial release just has been made:

• libnfo : a small library used to parse and write NFO files. NFO files are XML files used to store metadata information on many multimedia files. It is massively used by other Media Centers, such as XBMC, which allow you unique metadata storage among your various Media Center applications.
• libplayer : a multimedia A/V abstraction layer API. Its goal is to interact with Enna . libplayer provides a generic A/V API that relies on various multimedia player for Linux systems. It currently supports MPlayer, xine VLC and GStreamer only. This will allow future GeeXboX users to easily switch from one media player to another.
• libvalhalla : a media scanner library, that stores various information in an SQLite database. It features many Internet grabbers that allows automatic download of covers, lyrics, informations on media files, tags retrival in video and music files and so on. Among them, we currently support Allocine, Amazon, EXIF information, FFmpeg, ImDB, Last.fm, local files, LyricsFly.com, LyricWiki.org, NFO files, TheTVDB.com, TheMovieDB.org and TVRage.com. It can of course be extended to support so much more.

All of these libraries just hit the 1.0.0 release and are available either under source format in their respective projects’ homepages but also have been packaged for Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) users (but should work as well on Debian Sid) to try them out.

Also remind that these libraries are not meant to be GeeXboX specific. They are fully portable and can be used with many other projects.

As you may have understood, it is now possible for you to easily try out Enna before it gets officially released. However, and just for the most eager ones of you, you may appreciate the following screenshots of Enna .