Arch Linux

schmurfy

Member

Registered: 2015-03-22

Posts: 11

Media center setup

Hi,
I am a long time linux user as a server platform but just recently started building a media center for me and I am not quite sure where to start to do what I want.

I have an archlinux install with HDMI output and sound (using ALSA), I currently configured kodi to run on boot with an automatic login to lightdm and this works fine but what I want to achieve is to have the choice to run something else besides Kodi, here is how I see this:

- system boots and display a choice of applications to run
- I choose the application
- it runs an associated script to setup the X session and run the application needed

I already know how to write/use different xsessions from the commandline ( lightdm -d -c <config> )  but the piece I am mising is how I can give a choice to select from, can I do it with lightdm ? I am not particulary attached to it if something else can do it.

Any hint/pointer will be greatly appreciated, once I have an idea of where to go and what to use I am confident I can find how to configure the different parts.

schmurfy

Member

Registered: 2015-03-22

Posts: 11

Re: Media center setup

I find a setup that mostly works for me: I used lxdm as display manager, created one user for each application I want to run, removed the "!" in place of the password in /etc/shadow to allow passwordless login and added a .dmrc in each of the user's home folder to launch the window manager as well as the application itself which looks like this:

#!/bin/sh

i3 &
stepmania

Now I just need to make the selection screen look a little more sexy, maybe another display manager can do help with that but some of them look awfully complex to configure for what they do.
Ideally what I want to achieve is multiple large "blocks" side by side horizontally with a picture/icon inside instead of the current user selection.

If anyone can suggest a good option for the display manager it would be nice, there are a fair number of them and I found very little information on how they actually look or how they could look.

schmurfy

Member

Registered: 2015-03-22

Posts: 11

Re: Media center setup

I wasn't expecting that much...
Is what I want to do that unusual / complicated ?

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Media center setup

I found very little information on how they actually look or how they could look.

Whatever information you may find, it will not be as useful as actually trying them out. You've already tried lightdm and lxdm, there aren't that many more.

schmurfy

Member

Registered: 2015-03-22

Posts: 11

Re: Media center setup

thanks, I guess I will continue tinkering with them then.