Which operating system for Raspberry Pi ?

[mafyou]

+1 on PiCorePlayer, it's great. But for what it's worth, if you have any other uses for a particular Pi, it's pretty simple to run Squeezelite alongside whatever else you're doing, on a more general purpose distro like Raspberry Pi OS (previously "Raspbian"). I do this on my Pi 2 that serves as the house's ad blocker (Pi-Hole).

[Fahzz]

Is it working as a Squeezebox player out of the box?

Not with MoOde. See my post above- with MoOde, Squeezelite works out of the box with a few clicks, but when I asked about LMS i was told that trying was "pointless". These might also be available with Diet Pi preloaded I think, not sure if that's out of the box for LMS.

[jeroen2]

The UIs on Volumio and the other MPD-based distros are ugly, outdated and poorly designed IMO, compared to the Material Skin and Jivelite. They waste an incredible amount of screen space with those two circular controls, both of which should be simple lines, which would give room for much larger album art.

I actually like the design of Volumio, with those dials. It's perfectly sized and designed for mid-size (7 inch) touchscreens, though indeed rather useless on smaller or larger screens. But I agree that Material skin offers much better usability on any screen size. And although I do like the gimmick of the VU-meters in JiveLite, I find that the rest of the interface looks a bit outdated.

In the end it's all a matter of taste and personal choice of course, but I'm quite happy with the PcP/Material combination. Fully synchronised multi-room just rocks, with non-proprietary, full ownership as a nice cherry on the pi.

[paul-]

I have one of the new Allo Boss2 Players, which comes with a DAC HAT- is PiCore still compatible ?

Yes, it is. pCP7 has a slight issue with the audio output for this dac, but it's easy to override the default setting on the squeezelite page.

The screen and touch screen are a bit different. But there is an extension with pCP versions of the allo screen and remote control program. The extension is allo_boss2_oled.tcz

That can be installed from the extension page.

[Fahzz]

Thanks.

[Heliocentric]

I started out using Max2Play with an Allo product, and once I figured out the interface, it's been rock solid. The web interface is always there when I need it. I also have a Moode player but it's less reliable as far as the web interface. If I had to do it all over again, PICore Player would be on my shortlist as one to try out.