[GraveDigger1]

how about not telling me what i already know. how about letting me how to stop this behavior. the default for kodi should be to just run on the desktop unless the ENDUSER decides to expressly go into settings and enable run on startup / run as desktop or whatever it's called.

How about you take it down a notch?

I don't know Manjaro, but I know Windows, Android and Ubuntu. Kodi is not set to automatically start as a home screen on any of them. Perhaps in all your enthusiasm you've made certain changes to the boot loader or login menu section in Manjaro, causing your current predicament. I know it's possible in Ubuntu, but it's certainly not the default setting. It's not a setting inside of Kodi itself. It's not that OS aware. 

 all i did was open manjaro's sofware center, search for kodi, and install it. as for grub i have not made any changes to it. so if it's not a setting in kodi and i'm sure it's not something in manjaro it has to be something in the community build. i just emailed the packager and gave him / her both the link to this thread and the one i created on the manjaro forums.  since i know uninstalling kodi stops the behavior and manjaro boots normally maybe i'll reinstall it and see if the person who packaged it for manjaro made any changes in settings.