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Currently I'm using omxplayer on Raspbian to automatically play a folder of videos in loop after boot. It works great. The only problem is that it takes almost 90 seconds to boot and start to play video files. I switched to Xbian ; it was better. But still it would take almost 50 seconds to boot and play video files.

So I decided to find very minimal distros with fast boot process. I searched a lot, and found Minibian (http://sourceforge.net/projects/minibian/) and Moebius (http://moebiuslinux.sourceforge.net/), which both are probably the minimized versions of Raspbian. These distros claim to have very fast boot processes (20 and 10 seconds), which make them ideal for minimal embedded applications. This is great.

However, it seems that people have had problems installing omxplayer on these distros. Would you please help what we shall change, or what dependencies we shall install first, so as to be able to install omxplayer on very minimal distros, like Minibian or Moebius !?

By the way, do you suggest any other light and minimal distro to use?

Thank you for your time and support.

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    raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/14763/… – dhruvvyas90 Jun 21 '15 at 12:48
  • Nice link @dastaan. But I need to know how to install omxplayer on these minimal distros. – Omid1989 Jun 21 '15 at 13:16
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    May be you can fetch build from this link omxplayer.sconde.net especially on debian based minimal distro and install it. On other flavors, you can get source from github.com/huceke/omxplayer and compile it by yourself. Hope it helps. – dhruvvyas90 Jun 21 '15 at 13:41
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    I burned the latest minibian image to a spare SD card and ran it on my Rpi 2. Boot time is about 8 - 10 secs. And since It is a debian OS, you can simply type "apt-get update && apt-get install omxplayer" to install it. Although before doing that, you would like to install raspi-config (apt-get install raspi-config) to expand your rootfs size as there is hardly any room for videos. :) Hope you find this helpful. – dhruvvyas90 Jun 21 '15 at 14:40
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    Yes, you can use it. I just installed it. Seems to be working fine. – dhruvvyas90 Jun 21 '15 at 15:00
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You can fetch omxplayer build from this link http://omxplayer.sconde.net especially on debian based minimal distro and install it. On other flavors, you can get source from http://github.com/huceke/omxplayer and compile it by yourself.

======================================================================== Update:

I burned the latest minibian image to a spare SD card and ran it on my Rpi 2. Boot time is about 8 - 10 secs. And since It is a debian OS, you can simply type "apt-get update && apt-get install omxplayer" to install it. Although before doing that, you would like to install raspi-config (apt-get install raspi-config) to expand your rootfs size as there is hardly any room for videos. :)

And Yes, you can use http://subogero.github.io/remotepi/ on minibian. I just installed it. Seems to be working fine.

Hope you find this helpful.

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  • Dear @dastaan , would you please do me a favor and test Moebius and remotepi as well? Unfortunately I haven't received my RPi yet. Would you please test them and compare the results (boot time, and installation of remotepi) with Minibian ? Thanks a billion :) – Omid1989 Jun 21 '15 at 18:32
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    I tried to boot moebius on my rpi 2 but display didn't come up. I found documentation on their official site insufficient. Also, it is not a flavor of debian but an entirely different (and custom ?) OS. – dhruvvyas90 Jun 21 '15 at 18:35
  • Thanks a lot @dastaan for your help. As far as I know, the Moebius is a minimized version of Raspbian. However, it seems that Minibian is more reliable than Moebius. Right !? – Omid1989 Jun 21 '15 at 18:51
  • Well, in the installation guide of the Moebius (moebiuslinux.sourceforge.net/documentation/installation-guide) they say: ... This is now a totally new distribution, is not based on debian anymore ... . So you're right; it's not debian-based anymore. Minibian seems to be the answer. – Omid1989 Jun 21 '15 at 19:01
  • One more thing @dastaan : Have you tested Diet-Pi (fuzon.co.uk/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9#p9) on RPi 2 !? How does it look like? Is it fast enough !? – Omid1989 Jun 21 '15 at 20:00

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