An xsession that runs Kodi media center on top of an Openbox session

Debian/Ubuntu distros

./build.sh
sudo dpkg -i kodi-openbox.deb

Arch distros

sudo pacman -S fakeroot dpkg debtap
./build.sh
debtap kodi-openbox.deb

This will return an Arch package that can be installed with your favorite package manager, (Pacman, Octopi, Pamac, etc).

Other Linux distros

Note, this command manually copies all files to their intended places in the filesystem, meaning they will need to be uninstalled manually.

sudo cp -r -t /usr kodi-openbox/usr/**/*

On most systems, you should be able to choose your X session at the login screen. Choose "Kodi Openbox" and log in to start the session.

• kodi-openbox-session - runs a kodi-openbox session
• kodi-openbox-runprogram - closes kodi and runs a command. Kodi will reopen when the command completes. Arguments are the command to run

To set the background color of your openbox session, add the following command to ~/.config/openbox/autostart.sh

xsetroot -solid '#000000'

This will set the openbox background color to black, but you can change the hex value to be any color.

There are various kodi addons for launching external programs, but the one I tend to use is Advanced Launcher. If you want kodi to close when launching an external program, use the kodi-openbox-runprogram command as your program, and the command you want to run as its arguments.

If your display keeps going to sleep outside of kodi, it may be caused by a number of different programs.

To prevent gnome desktop from putting your display to sleep, run the following commands in a terminal while logged in as your kodi user:

# Prevent display from going to sleep
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay 0
# Prevent session from locking if the display does go to sleep
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-enabled false

To prevent X11 from putting your display to sleep, add the following commands to ~/.config/openbox/autostart.sh

# Disable screen saver
xset s off
# Disable screen blanking
xset s noblank
# Disable "Display Power Management Signaling"
xset -dpms