Hi all,
Here is a real easy method to allow dual-booting (or multi-booting) between Lakka and KODI.
It works by using PINN (a fork of NOOBS) to install Lakka + any other OS’s.
It then uses my new KODI add-on which makes a small modification to Lakka to make it boot-back into KODI when exited. The add-on also allows easily booting to Lakka from within KODI.
The how-to can be found here:
http://www.matthuisman.nz/2016/08/lakka-kodi-dual-boot-images.html
For me that has an SD card for OSMC and another one for Lakka, that is wonderful news ! Thanks a lot ! I have one question though : when the OSMC dev announces an update, will I get it automatically with your system ? And can I update Lakka through nightlies as usual ?
All OS’s will update normally 
So yes, OSMC will just update automatically as per usual. And Lakka can also be updated via manual or automatic methods.
The mods are minimal and stored in the Share directory which isn’t touched between updates.
Thank you very much ! I’ll try your images soon.
If you need any help, please try to leave a comment on the blog as I don’t check these forums often
This is great. A lot of people have been asking for this but none of us use Kodi, so it’s not something we were able to provide ourselves.
Just posting here to say it works beautifully ! Thank you so much !!
Thanks for the feedback
Hi, thanks for this project!
A couple questions:
My only issue with it is that LibreELEC does not support controllers ATM (this will change with the release of Kodi 17), but that’s minor, I can just use Yatse/Kore.
Hi,
You can update any OS independent (eg. update LibreELEC to latest Beta, or Lakka to latest nightly.) Simply update how you normally would (update folder method or via GUI).
I use only stables (refer to blog post for what versions it’s using)
NOOBS configured to set KODI to nominal size (approx 1GB for LibreELEC or 2GB for OSMC) and then gives the rest of free space to Lakka partition. You can change this however (refer to #2 of “few things to be aware of”)
The next stable of LibreELEC will be with KODI 17 which includes controller support! You can update via the manual method to the BETA version to try it out if need be.
Thanks for the post Matt, I plan to try your image soon. 1GB is more than adequate for LibreELEC and leaves plenty of storage for the rest.
You’ve mentioned there could be problems with updates, but I don’t see how it could happen, nor how the script in Lakka could get randomly deleted. Kodi updates could break the addon, but I believe it would have to be something major to break it.
Yes. That’s more a “worst case” note. Also a good place to provide the files so others can make their own dual-boot if need-be.
I just discovered this and it sounds great. I haven’t tried it yet but one thing I know will become an annoyance for me, there are quite a few roms that will make RetroArch quit/reset and so I guess each time that happens it will boot into the LibreELEC side. Anyone have any ideas for that?
I don’t know how difficult this would be, but I was thinking something like disable the functionality that boots into LibreELEC when RetroArch quits, then assign that function (is it a script that gets called?) to either a new menu item in Lakka (again no idea how hard it would be to add one) or to an existing menu item, say change “Shutdown” to instead boot LibreELEC. Is that doable?
I realize there are other ways to do this via SSH/command line or something like that, but my goal is to make it easy for others who are clueless about this kinda stuff.
[QUOTE=slakka;51394]I just discovered this and it sounds great. I haven’t tried it yet but one thing I know will become an annoyance for me, there are quite a few roms that will make RetroArch quit/reset and so I guess each time that happens it will boot into the LibreELEC side. Anyone have any ideas for that?
I don’t know how difficult this would be, but I was thinking something like disable the functionality that boots into LibreELEC when RetroArch quits, then assign that function (is it a script that gets called?) to either a new menu item in Lakka (again no idea how hard it would be to add one) or to an existing menu item, say change “Shutdown” to instead boot LibreELEC. Is that doable?
I realize there are other ways to do this via SSH/command line or something like that, but my goal is to make it easy for others who are clueless about this kinda stuff.[/QUOTE]
slakka:
Don’t know if you ever messed around with NOOBS (New Out-Of-the-Box Software) for the RPi, but it makes it insanely easy for anyone to set up a multi-boot partition on their Pi’s SD/microSD card. This news item recently just happened.
[QUOTE=Shockwave;51398]slakka:
Don’t know if you ever messed around with NOOBS (New Out-Of-the-Box Software) for the RPi, but it makes it insanely easy for anyone to set up a multi-boot partition on their Pi’s SD/microSD card. This news item recently just happened. :)[/QUOTE] I know about NOOBS and Lakka becoming officially supported. However there’s no customization to “switch” (easily that is, as in not command line and such) from Lakka to Kodi or the reverse is there? If I understand NOOBS correctly it has a boot selection menu but at that time most controllers wouldn’t work would they? Some might present as keyboards with simple arrow keys, but then they usually don’t send ENTER as any of their button presses do they?
If I’m wrong about all that though, then yes I guess I could just use NOOBS and do it myself.
Ah, my mistake. Actually…funny you mention it. I was struggling to get a Chromebox to work with Lakka, and found this along my journey:
I have two Asus Chromeboxes, and one of them is configured this way currently. Retroarch is an add-on within the Kodi programs menu, and executes from there, and brings up RA with the XMB style menu (i.e. The Lakka menu). It boots into OpenELEC. I’m sure you can also do the same with a Raspberry Pi, as well.
This dual-boot already uses NOOBs
@slakka What roms cause RetroArch to quit?
I assumed if there are no faults, RetroArch shouldn’t quit…
[QUOTE=mattrix;51450]This dual-boot already uses NOOBs
@slakka What roms cause RetroArch to quit?
I assumed if there are no faults, RetroArch shouldn’t quit…[/QUOTE] I spend a lot of time browsing through thousands of roms trying them so I have run into many that cause RetroArch to crash, sometimes requiring a reboot but usually RetroArch restarts on it’s own.
To make sure what I am seeing is actually a crash and not just the screen “resetting” or something I SSH’d in and ran retroarch manually to watch it. I tried to recall some roms that would crash it to test with. In some cases when I try to run retroarch again it segfaults, which is what must be happening when I mentioned having to reboot above. Oh and I checked with ps to make sure it’s not somehow still running. The roms are from the No-Intro sets, I have not tested them individually on standalone emulators, nor have I searched online to see if they are known to be not working.
Rayman (World) - Atari Jaguar Robocop (US Version 1) - FB Alpha
Those are the only ones I can remember right now because I tried them recently, but there are many more I have encountered over the months I’ve been playing with Lakka and trying various games. Note that when I say many more, it’s still a relatively small number considering I’ve probably tried hundreds of roms by now. For a person who is looking to play specific games it might be very rare actually, but since I am mostly “browsing” I have run into it many times.
It’s tricky due to that being a fault somewhere else. Retroarch ideally shouldn’t crash.
Anyway, a work around for you would just use the NOOBS autoboot to always boot into KODI (default behaviour of my dual-boot) Then remove the autostart.sh from Lakka.
Then simply use the Reboot menu item to get back to KODI.
UPDATE (19/08/17):
The new boot-back method shouldn’t now reboot to KODI if Retroarch crashes (only on a clean exit).
[QUOTE=mattrix;51535]It’s tricky due to that being a fault somewhere else. Retroarch ideally shouldn’t crash.
Anyway, a work around for you would just use the NOOBS autoboot to always boot into KODI (default behaviour of my dual-boot) Then remove the autostart.sh from Lakka.
Then simply use the Reboot menu item to get back to KODI.[/QUOTE] That sounds like a good solution, but would a USB controller work in the NOOBS boot selection screen?