Kodi Community Forum

Looking for some advice please.

With the release of the Pi2 and initial testing of the desktop performance we are looking to replace a number of PC's. We need both desktop and media centre capability, we have used xbmc/kodi to play media content created within the school environment. Videos/Music/Slideshows etc. The Pi2 seems to have the power to provide us with a functional desktop that could run Kodi/OSMC whenever we needed multimedia playback.

Can anyone assist with running Kodi/OSMC directly from the desktop?

Many thanks
Spart

Kodi will not support running as a windowed X app.
It is in theory possible to run it fullscreen (hiding the desktop), although it's not something I've tried particularly.

You want to install a deb file, e.g. from here: http://michael.gorven.za.net/

But note, you will get better performance, and better configuration from a dedicated kodi distribution (like OpenELEC/OSMC).

(2015-02-06, 15:36)popcornmix Wrote: [ -> ]Kodi will not support running as a windowed X app.
It is in theory possible to run it fullscreen (hiding the desktop), although it's not something I've tried particularly.

You want to install a deb file, e.g. from here: http://michael.gorven.za.net/

But note, you will get better performance, and better configuration from a dedicated kodi distribution (like OpenELEC/OSMC).

Thanks for the reply.

We would expect to run Kodi/OSMC full screen and return to the desktop on exit. Unfortunately Michaels builds are based on the older V6 debian and are not optimised for the PI2 and upto date with the Kodi release schedule. Would it be possible to start from OSMC for the PI2 and add a desktop? I noticed there is a startx command in config.txt on the OSMC install.

I can imaging more and more people wanting to do this as the PI2 is so much more capable and we can make significant power savings by replacing PC's.

Cheers
Spart

(2015-02-06, 15:52)sparticle Wrote: [ -> ]We would expect to run Kodi/OSMC full screen and return to the desktop on exit. Unfortunately Michaels builds are based on the older V6 debian and are not optimised for the PI2 and upto date with the Kodi release schedule. Would it be possible to start from OSMC for the PI2 and add a desktop? I noticed there is a startx command in config.txt on the OSMC install.

That's why dedicated distributions are preferred.

An armv6 build works fine on Pi2 (not optimal, but probably good enough).
That build appears to be 14.0 which is pretty new (but missing a few commits from 14.1).

I suggest you experiment with that for now. No doubt a Pi2 build and 14.1 will appear at some point.

Quote:That's why dedicated distributions are preferred.

I've been running Kodi on Raspbian for awhile now and it works just as well. The performance difference is not noticeable, especially on the Raspberry Pi B2. I am using the Michael Gorven build. The difference in performance was once really noticeable but no longer is due to performance improvements that have been made to Kodi.

Kodi shows up listed in the display manager on the login screen and you can select it instead of the default display manager, although the recommended method for launching is from the command line. I have had no problems with launching it this way other than a bug on exit that gives a black screen. This is a known bug that should be fixed soon and there's a script work-around that should fix this.

I think on the Pi2, if you give the GPU enough memory, launching from the desktop environment might work. I've experimented with this before. On the B model, things would break the same as if you didn't give the GPU the extra memory it needed and then launched from the command line. I've did a brief test and it looked like it was going to work on the Pi2 with gpu_mem=320.

Launching from the login screen seems like a better option to me though. You just need to log out and then back in again without rebooting to get to the desktop and when you reboot, you auto open either the desktop or Kodi, depending on which you were logged into last. This prevents anyone from just coming up and launching your mail program if you leave it running Kodi. They would need to log out and then log back in again with the password. If they did a reboot, they would be back in Kodi.

You need to make sure you have some permissions stuff set up properly to get keyboards to work properly which is probably the real reason people go with one of the dedicated installs, however...
RaspBMC/OSMC runs really stable, however breaks every once in awhile on updates. It auto updates by default and it's not clear how to update other than the auto update.
OpenElec is equally stable and has fewer problems updating however there is no easy way to install additional software. Your best option is dual boot using Raspbian and OpenElec through NOOBS if you go this route.
XBian is not as stable. They claim you can install it directly into Rasbian, however every one of my attempts to follow their directions has ruined my Raspbian install requiring me to revert to a backup of the entire install.

Currently I run Raspbian with Kodi installed, forked-daapd, cups print server, bash scripts for text to speech, motion video capture, and vnc. I've simultaneously streamed music to one room while watching videos in another room without the video skipping on the Pi2. I've also printed while video was playing without any issues. The Model B would sometimes pause video under heavy loads like this, but the Pi2 handles it much better.

Also running nginx server with a site that will send WOL signals to wake computers on the LAN.

Sounds like you just need to playback videos/music/slideshows and not a full-blown media center. There are certainly non-kodi apps that can do this. You could even nfs mount the Desktop folder so they appear right away and can be opened by double-clicking rather than opening Kodi and having to navigate.

Another option is Berryboot to install multiple RPi distributions. Very easy to use. It can easily put the RPi OS distributions on a usb stick for better write performance than a SD card which is what you need for a RPi desktop.

http://www.berryterminal.com/doku.php/berryboot

I have been trying to multi-boot Raspbian, OSMC and OpenElect on my Raspberry Pi 2 Model B via NOOBS. When booting OSMC the logo is displayed while running but then it goes black like if it had blocked. I thought it was due to a booting problem so I tried to repeat the whole process a second time. I chose to boot OSMC first and it worked perfectly, I even managed to install the first ADD-ON (1 Channel), but after working with Raspbian I reeboted OSMC and went back to the same issue of the black screen at the starting point. I believe it might be something with Raspbian's or OpenElect's configuration which maybe does not allow OSMC to work correctly; or as well something related to 1 Channel ADD-ON, but then I cannot explain why it didn't work at first.

NicoReds - suggest you avoid discussing of banned add ons. http://kodi.wiki/view/Official:Forum_rul...ed_add-ons

Didn't know at all it was banned. . Then, any idea what it could be?

(2015-12-07, 13:44)NicoReds Wrote: [ -> ]I have been trying to multi-boot Raspbian, OSMC and OpenElect on my Raspberry Pi 2 Model B via NOOBS. When booting OSMC the logo is displayed while running but then it goes black like if it had blocked. I thought it was due to a booting problem so I tried to repeat the whole process a second time. I chose to boot OSMC first and it worked perfectly, I even managed to install the first ADD-ON (1 Channel), but after working with Raspbian I reeboted OSMC and went back to the same issue of the black screen at the starting point. I believe it might be something with Raspbian's or OpenElect's configuration which maybe does not allow OSMC to work correctly; or as well something related to 1 Channel ADD-ON, but then I cannot explain why it didn't work at first.

I once had the same issue when I recognized that my distribution was running out of disk space...

L