Basically, I want to make it so I have an HTPC with zero need for keyboard and mouse, but I have no idea how I'm going to do it. I know there are remotes for Kodi, applications that let you have keyboard and mouse input with smartphones, others let you use Xbox controller to control Windows... But it still seems a bit cumbersome to do certain things. Ideally I'd not want to go back to the Windows desktop very often, but it's difficult when updating drivers for example (this is a gaming HTPC). Could you give me some insight?
I've been thinking about casting my desktop screen to my laptop, but I didn't find a program that would let me do it.
I believe you can set up Kodi to start on windows startup .... and for remote look into flirc. really handy, you can literally configure any remote with it.
FLIRC is nice, indeed. If you're not going to game on that machine, i'd install
OpenELEC (wiki) and don't worry about updating drivers anymore.
I'm stuck on Windows for now, for gaming purposes. (speaking of that I'm kinda hoping SteamOS becomes a success, but for now it's hard to leave Windows)
GPU driver update is especially problematic. 2015 and Nvidia and ATI haven't yet developed an installer that eliminates the need for DDU and similar tools.
It seems to me that it's easier to customize Kodi (with different background images, for example) with standard input than from a remote, but I'll look into it.
I have a vnc server installed on my windows pc that I can enable/disable via a button on the remote control so that it is not running continuously in the background. But I find myself just using the wireless keyboard I have for most things outside of Kodi.
Thats the one I have and I strongly recommend it. Good reception, big enough so its not a pain to use and the batteries last for ages.
Cheap, too. Unfortunately $39 becomes R$199 here.
