E2 Linux is an umbrella name for

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s designed to control

digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using Digital signal, digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an ...

receivers ( DVB-S,

DVB-C Digital Video Broadcasting - Cable (DVB-C) is the Digital Video Broadcasting, DVB European consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital television over coaxial cable, cable. This system transmits an MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 family digita ...

, and

DVB-T DVB-T, short for Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial, is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television that was first published in 1997 and first broadcast in Singapore in Fe ...

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also known as a cable converter box, cable box, receiver, or simply box, and historically television decoder or a converter, is an information appliance device that generally contains a Tuner (radio)#Television, TV tuner inpu ...

es and

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV), also called TV over broadband, is the service delivery of television over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Usually sold and run by a Telephone company, telecom provider, it consists of broadcast live telev ...

receivers. E2 Linux was originally developed for Dreambox receivers, but after 2010 a number of other manufacturers began shipping devices with E2 Linux, including Formuler, GigaBlue,

Octagon In geometry, an octagon () is an eight-sided polygon or 8-gon. A '' regular octagon'' has Schläfli symbol and can also be constructed as a quasiregular truncated square, t, which alternates two types of edges. A truncated octagon, t is a ...

, Opticum, Unibox, Vu+, and Zgemma.

History

A modification of the

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

operating system, now called E2 Linux, was developed by a group of enthusiasts in the TuxBox project between 2000 and 2001 for the digital satellite receiver

DBox2 The DBox is a Digital Video Broadcasting, DVB DVB-S, satellite and DVB-C, cable digital television integrated receiver decoder (set-top box). They were distributed widely for use with Pay TV, Pay television channels. It was commissioned by t ...

, which was supplied by the German media group Kirch Group for access to the pay satellite station DF1 (later Premiere, then Sky Deutschland). The receiver was supplied with BetaResearch's Betanova

firmware In computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, h ...

, which was based on Sun's ChorusOS and used

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

for the user interface. Its responsiveness was slow and its capabilities limited. At least three user interfaces - Neutrino, Lcars (inspired by

Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the Star Trek: The Original Series, series of the same name and became a worldwide Popular culture, pop-culture Cultural influence of ...

), and Enigma - were developed as part of the TuxBox project,{{Cite web , url = http://www.dietmar-h.net/az_de.html , title = Dbox2 A-Z , accessdate = 2010-10-07 , language = de , archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090317091433/http://www.dietmar-h.net/az_de.html , archive-date = 2009-03-17 , url-status = dead but KirchPayTV went bankrupt in 2002, ending production of the

receivers. As early as 2003, however, Dream Multimedia (now Dream Service GmbH) picked up the development and introduced the Dreambox 5600, 5620 and 7000 satellite receivers with a 252 MHz

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

processor and IBM STB04500 chips. Dream Multimedia chose the enigma interface for its receiver and named the entire operating system after it. In 2006 it developed a new version called enigma2. At that time, many other manufacturers appeared who did not contribute much to the development but competed with Dream Multimedia on price. The company therefore decided to close further development of the system.

Hardware

Devices designed for Enigma2 (i.e. satellite receivers,

es and

receivers, often collectively referred to as "box") are equipped with one or more DVB-S,

and

tuners (unless it is a pure IPTV receiver), a

remote control A remote control, also known colloquially as a remote or clicker, is an consumer electronics, electronic device used to operate another device from a distance, usually wirelessly. In consumer electronics, a remote control can be used to operat ...

receiver and an

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

and/or

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

network adapter. One or more decoder card slots are available for receiving encrypted programmes. For storing the operating system, the device is usually equipped with flash memory, and a larger hard disk, SSD, USB flash drive or memory card can be connected or inserted for recording programmes or for playing back files. The device can also use network storage or a disk volume on a personal computer using the Samba or NFS protocol. The system is designed to be controlled by a remote control similar to those used for television sets. A television connected to an Enigma device, usually by

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary digital interface used to transmit high-quality video and audio signals between devices. It is commonly used to connect devices such as televisions, computer monitors, projectors, gam ...

(or

SCART SCART (also known as or , especially in France, 21-pin EuroSCART in marketing by Sharp Corporation, Sharp in Asia, Euroconector in Spain, EuroAV or EXT, or EIA Multiport in the United States, as an EIA interface) is a French-originated standard ...

in older systems) cable, acts as a multimedia monitor. The device can also usually be connected to a home audio system, usually via an

S/PDIF S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) is a type of digital audio interface used in consumer audio equipment to output audio over relatively short distances. The signal is transmitted over either a coaxial cable using RCA connector, RCA or BN ...

interface.

Software

The central application is Enigma2, which implements a

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

(GUI) for controlling DVB receivers. Since many of the devices running E2 Linux have limited internal and external memory sizes, lightweight versions of Linux tools ( BusyBox, dropbear, etc.) are usually used, and the OpenEmbedded (OE) environment is used for building. The configuration of the functions needed for system management is implemented as text dialogs. The system can be accessed using standard terminal emulation programs, ssh or

telnet Telnet (sometimes stylized TELNET) is a client-server application protocol that provides access to virtual terminals of remote systems on local area networks or the Internet. It is a protocol for bidirectional 8-bit communications. Its main ...

, file-transfer protocols

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...

, SFTP and can act as

Samba Samba () is a broad term for many of the rhythms that compose the better known Brazilian music genres that originated in the Afro-Brazilians, Afro Brazilian communities of Bahia in the late 19th century and early 20th century, It is a name or ...

and NFS server and client. Plugins with additional features, like

Kodi Kodi may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * KODI, a radio station in Cody, Wyoming, USA * Kodi (film), ''Kodi'' (film), India, 2016 * Kodi, a dog in the 2004 film ''Balto III: Wings of Change'' Other uses * Kodi (software), an open sour ...

, Chromium , HbbTV, may be available in some E2 Linux distributions.

Current state

In 2020, there are dozens of E2 Linux distributions that differ in enigma2 functionality, additional installed software, plugins, etc. Some of the most well-known include OpenATV, OpenViX, OpenPLi, OpenEight, Black Hole, EGAMI, PurE2. They come in the form of a disk image packaged in a ZIP file. The same format is used for complete backups of the entire system; there is also an option to backup only configuration files. Updates can be performed by using the opkg

package manager A package manager or package management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner. A package manager deals wi ...

. Dream multimedia no longer uses the name Enigma for the latest versions of its system, but a new system named Drembox OS. Some receivers support Multiboot - the ability to install multiple distributions or different versions of the current distribution, for feature checking and comparison purposes or as a rescue system in case of problems rather than for routine use.

References

Computing platforms Embedded Linux distributions

History

Hardware

Software

Current state

See also

References