Xibo digital signage solution is now compatible with the Raspberry Pi 5 thanks to Axeribo, an unofficial alternative to the digital signage player for Xibo, that is implemented in Rust, and designed for Linux platforms.
Long-time readers of CNX Software may remember that I played around with the Xibo open-source digital signage player many years ago (2011-2012). I notably managed to run Xibo for Arm in QEMU, test Xibo digital signage in the Raspberry Pi emulator, and even try it on real hardware: a MeLE A1000 Android TV box to which I installed Linux. It kind of works, but without hardware video decoding and no 3D graphics acceleration, performance was rather on the low side. I eventually stopped playing around with Xibo Arm Linux once Xibo for Android was released in late 2012, and the developers decided to drop support for the Linux client (although they relaunched it in 2019 for x86 only).
Many years have passed since then, and there are now multiple digital signage solutions for the Raspberry Pi SBCs, such as Yodeck, Info-Beamer, and Anthias/Screenly, among others. Most are commercial solutions, except Anthias, the open-source variant of Screenly that lacks features such as multi-screen and remote web management.
So the Xibo digital signage solution can still be an interesting solution for the Raspberry Pi 5. It’s comprised of the Xibo CMS (Server) that’s free and open-source, and clients for various operating systems like Android and WebOS, of which only the Windows client is free, and the development of the Linux version appears to have stalled. That’s probably why Georg Brandl (birkenfeld) decided to develop an open-source Linux client called Arexibo.
Arexibo is mainly implemented in Rust and makes use of Qt6 WebView and FFMpeg multimedia library. Although no binary builds are provided, Xibo forum user’s 0x0 released an unofficial “ArexiboOS image” based on Fedora 43 x86_64 last October, followed by an image based on Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit a few days ago.
0x0 tested it on a Raspberry Pi 5 8GB, but noticed about 2GB RAM used, and reported that MP4 video files play smoothly in full screen up to 1920 x 1080 resolution and 60 FPS frame rate. The Broadcom BCM2712 SoC in the Raspberry Pi 5 only comes with an H.265 hardware video decoder, so that would have to be H.264 software video decoding here.
When further discussing with 0x0 over email, we learned a few limitations:
- MP4 is the only supported format for video files
- Other video formats performed poorly on RPi OS
- He tested the image on Raspberry Pi 5 with JavaScript rendering and 1080p6 video playback on a 4K TV using MP4 videos with H264 video codec and AAC audio codec.
- A few know bugs
- PDF “per page/full pdf” view time setting in CMS is not working as expected
- Layout issues when loading the scroll text for the first time, after changing the layout.
He also noted that since LibreELEC performs flawlessly with lots of formats on the Raspberry Pi 5, there should be a way to improve video support for Arexibo too.
Some concerns are that Arexibo is currently based on ZMQ/ZeroMQ for communication with the server, and Xibo developers are moving to WebSockets. ZMQ won’t be phased out immediately, but might be in the future. The project also appears to be maintained sporadically, with the latest commits submitted in May 2025.
If you are already familiar with Xibo, trying Arexibo on a Raspberry Pi 5 will just be a matter of installing the image to the microSD card and connecting the Pi 5 to your server. If you are not, you’ll need to install the Xibo CMS on a server, make yourself familiar with the Xibo web interface, and learn how to use it, so you may need a couple of days to get something working.
Thanks 0x0 for the tip.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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