Autostart Kodi 15.2 on Ubuntu 15.10

Question

I cant seem to find a good guide for Ubuntu 15.10 to autostart Kodi. Does this guide work for 15.10 or does it need changing?

Im not 100% confident in linux so any help would be appreciated! Cheers

Solution

It is possible to start and run Kodi in standalone mode as a service as elaborated here:

• Autostart Kodi on Vivid
• Kodi Wiki: How To Autostart Kodi

We have to be aware that this will start and run Kodi without any supporting applications we usually have when running on top of an Ubuntu desktop. We may have to make additional settings for networking, audio, graphics, shared devices, and more.

Therefore I found it much easier to install and maintain Kodi running as an application from our Ubuntu desktop.

Answers to "How do I start applications automatically on login?" will show you how to automatically start Kodi at login.

For this purpose I created a dedicated user "kodi" on our HTPC with passwordless login. This gives us the opportunity to also run applications other than Kodi on the box, and have different user accounts for different use cases (e.g. access restrictions).