Possible to use as a minimal video player?

[omid-313]

Hi,

I want to use RPi B+ as a minimal video player that automatically starts to play videos after boot for an infinite loop.

I tried Raspbian; it was OK, but the boot time was too long (nearly 90 seconds).
Then I tried Xbian; it was better, but still the boot time was long (nearly 50 seconds).

So I searched the net for minimal distributions, and I found Moebius!
Now the following are my questions, and I would be really thankful if you help me find their answers:

1. How long is the boot time of Moebius on a Class-10 micro-SD card!?

2. Is it possible to install omxplayer and LIRC easily, using the following commands (as we do in Raspbian)? Or we should install some other packages and libraries first!?

   sudo apt-get install omxplayer
   sudo apt-get install lirc
   

3. I found out that some people had problem playing videos with omxplayer via Moebius. Have this problem been solved?

Thanks for your time and support.

[Andrea Benini]

Distro is pretty small in terms of disk space as well as for memory. I have created it for minimal headless systems, small home servers, robotics, DIY electronics and stuff like that. That's why I even haven't tried to port XOrg or a browser to it, it's not its scope and probably Raspbian should fit better for it. Now, regarding to your questions
1 - I don't even have a Class10 SD card here, my tests are referred to Class 4-5-6 SDs. With my PIs (B with 256Mb or 512Mb) and a DHCP server in the LAN I can boot it in approx.10 secs (ssh loaded and local shell at prompt). You cannot achieve it on the first boot where SSH keys are generated or when you do something like an SD autoresize (obviously). This is quite important for robotics for example
2 - I have never created lirc or omxplayer packages for it, I don't even have mplayer (yet) but I can give them a spin to see what they do. As previously told to others I'm using .deb packages because I have ported deb-utils to it even if this distro is not debian based, it's built from scratch. I liked the Debian dependencies system and I didn't want to recreate everything from the ground up without deps (slackware docet)
3 - You can obviously do your own test, compile or port everything you want to it. You already have gcc, binutils and the whole stuff to get it working. I have never ported omxplayer to it (yet)

[omid-313]

Thank you very much @AndreaBenini for your reply.

Well, 10-second boot with RPi B and class-6 SD card means that it may probably boot even faster with RPi B+ or RPI 2 plus class-10 SD card. That's really good.

The information you provided was good. However, I didn't get my answers.

I want to install omxplayer and LIRC packages. Do I need to install something else before I can do it? Or, do I have to change some dependencies, directories, etc. before installing them!?

[Andrea Benini]

You need to install them from sources because I didn't created these packages yet. I actually don't know what kind of dependencies are required but you can compile them too see what it's needed.
I'm closing few projects right now but I'll surely add them in my build list (see ideas forum)

[omid-313]

Thanks again @AndreaBenini for your quick reply.

Actually, I'm new to Linux, so I don't know how to "install from source" or "compile".
Would you please help me how to do this?
Are the following commands enough!?

sudo apt-get install omxplayer
sudo apt-get install lirc

[Andrea Benini]

No, these are not enough.
You need to install the GCC toolchain and compile with them. I'll give them a spin in the next days to understand possible dependencies, if there're not deep XOrg nested libs I'll try to produce a suitable .deb packages for it

[omid-313]

Thank you very much @AndreaBenini for your support.

I look enthusiastically forward to your updated news.

[omid-313]

New news @AndreaBenini on this issue?