Apple TV - Desktop Environment

General Discussion
1

Hi OSMC crew and everybody else.

First off thanks for all your hard work, i was able to very easily install OSMC on my original Apple TV which works a treat and looks great!

In installing OSMC i had a thought whether there could be a desktop environment added so had a search through and found that its not possible and unlikely for the future. Reason i was looking at this is i have another original ATV which i wanted to use as a media server.

In my mind my plan was to have one ATV as a media server which i would want to add content over the network from my iMac. The ATV would then serve media to another ATV (OSMC) and a new ATV (VLC APP).
Does anyone know how i would be able to do this? I’ve googled plenty for other linux installs for the ATV only to find whats currently available cannot have a GUI much like OSMC?

2

Well for the time being there is officially no desktop environment as none of the other platforms OSMC run on has/needs an X server.
As you would have an X server on ATV I guess technically you should be able to run a desktop environment instead of Kodi

3

Thanks for your quick reply!

So when you say i would have an X server on the ATV is this not a software and if so how do i have it on the ATV?

4

if your insecure on how to do that you probably shouldn’t be doing it in the first place cause your likely to break something and then you will be back here complain that osmc broke

5

Well yes, X-Server is a software and you have it on the TV as it is the way how Kodi is being displayed on the ATV1. For other platforms (e.g. Raspberry) another technology is used therefore on that platforms by default no x-server is installed. But I just wrote that to explain to you the context. As mentioned technically it is possible but at the current moment it would need more than just a press of a button and would require Linux knowledge.

6

I would not recommend doing this. The AppleTV doesn’t have enough memory for this.

Sam

7

Thanks Toast but im sorry i wouldnt be back complaining about OSMC at all, i fully appreciate i am asking about something that is not supported.

Thanks for all of your advise. Thanks Sam for your input, a shame but seems im better off running a different setup which is a shame as i’d liked to have kept all appliances Apple!