2014-04-12, 05:08
I'm moving systems around, and need to run Linux on my livingroom HTPC - not enough Windows licences and there doesn't seem much point in dropping $100 for something so simple.
All I need is this:
1) Boot directly into XBMC
2) Very easy wife-friendly way (single keypress) to switch between XBMC and a Kiosk-mode Chromium window.
My wife watches a lot of shows on oddball streaming sites, and I've never had any luck getting addons to stream video successfully. My current HTPC in the living room is running Windows, autostarts XBMC and Chrome, and I've bound ALT-TAB to a remote button so switching between XBMC and Chrome is painless.
I've been trying this with Ubuntu 12.04, but there are a slew of minor problems. I have trouble getting both XBMC and Chrome to autostart, with XBMC being full screen with the focus at startup. Once it's there, you have to take it off Full Screen before you can switch windows because while XBMC is fullscreen Ubuntu decides to pay no attention to things like ALT-TAB... then it's awkward to get things back fullscreen again. Wife becomes annoyed.
Of course, XBMCbuntu and OpenElec are unsuitable, because neither offers fully featured web browsers capable of running Flash - or at least without being even more awkward (logging in and out of the XBMC user in XBMCbuntu, for example).
Is there some configuration option I'm missing, or some simple way to set this up? Or would another distro be preferable? Basically, I don't want to see the underlying OS at all, really - I just want to see XBMC or Chrome.
All I need is this:
1) Boot directly into XBMC
2) Very easy wife-friendly way (single keypress) to switch between XBMC and a Kiosk-mode Chromium window.
My wife watches a lot of shows on oddball streaming sites, and I've never had any luck getting addons to stream video successfully. My current HTPC in the living room is running Windows, autostarts XBMC and Chrome, and I've bound ALT-TAB to a remote button so switching between XBMC and Chrome is painless.
I've been trying this with Ubuntu 12.04, but there are a slew of minor problems. I have trouble getting both XBMC and Chrome to autostart, with XBMC being full screen with the focus at startup. Once it's there, you have to take it off Full Screen before you can switch windows because while XBMC is fullscreen Ubuntu decides to pay no attention to things like ALT-TAB... then it's awkward to get things back fullscreen again. Wife becomes annoyed.
Of course, XBMCbuntu and OpenElec are unsuitable, because neither offers fully featured web browsers capable of running Flash - or at least without being even more awkward (logging in and out of the XBMC user in XBMCbuntu, for example).
Is there some configuration option I'm missing, or some simple way to set this up? Or would another distro be preferable? Basically, I don't want to see the underlying OS at all, really - I just want to see XBMC or Chrome.
