Make OSMC compatible with Raspbian?

Hi guys,

OSMC doesn’t have all the same stuff that Raspbian has when you install it to an SD card. This means that installing a lot of applications doesn’t actually work and I have to do a lot of troubleshooting to fix it. One example is Pihole which just quits during setup. This is even on a fresh install of OSMC (works fine with Raspbian) so rather annoying really!

What I’d like to do is download all the other stuff that Raspbian comes with, whatever that may be (I’m not well-versed in linux), so that installing applications is a less difficult process.

Would there be a simple way to do this?

Thanks!

Well I think your demand is a bit to focus on a specific platform. OSMC primary focus is to offer a performance Media Center on multiple platforms where the Raspberry Pi is one of those platforms. OSMC get’s is main strength from the fact that it is build on top of plain Debian so you can use and install all the respective packages from Debian.
Raspbian on the other hand is on OS that focus on a single platform (Raspberry) and runs it’s won repository to provide packages on top of Debian.
So while you also can use that repository partly on OSMC you might run into issues from time to time. Therefore recommendation would be to install the Original Debian packages where ever possible.

Thanks for the explanation. I agree this isn’t for everyone and it’s a good idea to keep it fast, but my R Pi seems to be handling itself pretty well at the moment so I’m happy to do what you suggested!

Would you be able to advise on the best way to achieve what you suggested? Like I say, I am not very experienced with linux but am looking to learn where I can!

Well what I suggested was to stay within the Debian/OSMC repository, which is quite easy and you don’t need to do anything to achieve that. But I guess your question is how do you get Pihole functionality with that. That unfortunately would be a bit more complicated as you would need to find a adblock solution that is as easy to install as Pihole.
Gnerally you could install Pihole on OSMC (see some of the links) as you might only need to install whiptail and iproute2 before running the script but I think you might be much better off to dedicate a Raspberry with Raspbian for that function.

http://www.nickdj.co.uk/raspberry-pi/pi-hole/9-raspberry-pi-on-osmc.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/6ovacx/osmc_pihole/

Thanks for the information. I did see that thread before but it did not seem like the OP was able to find a solution to his problem. I checked to see if I had the packages you mentioned by typing associated commands and attempting to install them, and I do, so I don’t think that’s an issue.

Whilst it would be nice to have a few separate devices to handle different tasks, but I’m afraid I can’t afford that luxury. :slight_smile:

Perhaps there’s an issue with my setup then, although the only thing I’ve done with OSMC so far is install Transmission and do updates when prompted. Done apt get update and upgrade too of course.

Make sure you use apt-get dist-upgrade.
apt-get upgrade will cause problems.

yep done that one too! None of them have fixed the issue.

Without knowing the output of those apt-get commands; or what error you exactly get, it’s hard to speculate.