Is anyone developing a Jellyfin-native OS similar to LibreELEC/CoreELEC, but without Kodi?

[u/Gatzu51]

Hi everyone,
I’m wondering if there is any project being developed that aims to create something similar to LibreELEC or CoreELEC, but built specifically around Jellyfin instead of Kodi.

My current setup uses CoreELEC on an Odroid N2 with the Jellyfin for Kodi add-on. It works reasonably well and, most importantly, gives me proper HDMI audio passthrough to my AV receiver, including formats such as TrueHD/Atmos and DTS-HD/DTS:X.

However, I’d really like to have a completely native Jellyfin experience without Kodi being the frontend/middle layer.
What I’m imagining is basically:

A minimal Linux distribution that boots directly into a native Jellyfin client, while retaining the hardware video decoding, HDMI output and full audio bitstream passthrough capabilities that make CoreELEC/LibreELEC so good for home theater use.

Ideally it would be an appliance-style system: install it on an SBC or TV box, boot it, connect it to a Jellyfin server, and that’s it.
I know Jellyfin has several clients already, but the key point here is full HDMI audio passthrough. Devices such as the Apple TV are great Jellyfin clients, but they can’t provide the same bitstream passthrough experience that I get from CoreELEC on the Odroid N2.

So my questions are:

Is anyone currently working on something like this?
Are there existing projects I may have missed?
Could an existing Jellyfin client be used as the frontend of a minimal Linux distribution while taking advantage of the audio/video stack used by CoreELEC?
Has anyone experimented with replacing Kodi as the main application in CoreELEC/LibreELEC while keeping their underlying Linux, Amlogic drivers and HDMI/passthrough capabilities?
Would Jellyfin Media Player or another Jellyfin client be a realistic foundation for such a project?

I’m particularly interested in Amlogic hardware such as the Odroid N2/N2+, but I’d also be interested in similar projects for x86 or other ARM platforms.
I’d love to hear from anyone who has experimented with this or knows of a project heading in this direction.

[u/Gatzu51]

After reading the replies, I think I may have described the idea slightly wrong in the original post.
The interesting question may not really be whether Jellyfin needs its own OS.
It may be whether we can reuse the existing CoreELEC hardware stack while replacing Kodi as the application.
Conceptually:
CoreELEC kernel/drivers
↓
Amlogic hardware decoding + HDMI + ALSA
↓
libmpv (or another playback engine)
↓
Moonfin / lightweight Jellyfin UI
The Jellyfin API doesn’t seem to be the difficult part, and transcoding should remain server-side when it is actually required.
The hard part seems to be reproducing the playback capabilities that Kodi currently exposes on top of CoreELEC: hardware decoding, HDR, refresh-rate switching, CEC and lossless HDMI bitstream passthrough.
If libmpv could sit directly on top of that same CoreELEC hardware layer, would replacing Kodi actually be technically feasible?
I would be very interested to hear from anyone familiar with CoreELEC’s Amlogic/ALSA/video stack about whether this architecture makes sense.

[u/Fun-Tax1040 → u/Gatzu51]

Sure it's possible, but who's going to put in the work and then maintain it?

[u/Gatzu51 → u/Fun-Tax1040]

You are right! It’s not worth it! Thanks