XBMC/Kodi 14 Alpha 4 Brings EGL + GLESv2 To X11

Kodi, the open-source multimedia software formerly known as XBMC, is out with a new alpha release in preparation for its inaugural v14.0 debut.

Kodi 14 is mostly about cleaning-up the XBMC code-base but there's several user-facing changes worth mentioning with Kodi 14 Alpha 4.

Friday's alpha four debut brings support for sub-channels in PVR, support for DSD audio, mouse support in Blu-ray menus, 4K playback on Android, support for the Freescale i.MX6 SoC, and perhaps most notably is the EGL and OpenGL ES 2.0 support when running under X11.

Kodi/XBMC has already supported EGL + GLES when running on mobile platforms where these APIs are predominantly used, but the recent Mesa Linux graphics driver releases have supported OpenGL ES 2.0/3.0 on the desktop along with EGL. Up to now XBMC on the Linux desktop has used the desktop OpenGL with GLX. The Linux desktop has been trying to move to EGL and ultimately do away with GLX but that's still some time out. The proprietary NVIDIA Linux driver has also recently begun supporting EGL on the desktop.

More details on Kodi 14 Alpha 4 can be found via the release announcement at XBMC.org.