Last time I was looking at putting Kodibuntu onto a low spec computer (in this case a AMD E350 as I have a couple of those and they are not much use for anything else). I duly did install the Kodibuntu image but there was no sound on the computer when it was set up. These types of issues are unfortunately quite common with Lubuntu, upon which Kodibuntu is based. So I went back to the drawing board and installed Xubuntu and then Kodi on top of it. It works very well for media playback on that computer and isn’t resource limited with that.
So right now I have five computers. In the bedroom I have the main PC and the media PC, both on Xubuntu, then there is a third computer (one of the AMD E350s) with Windows 8.1 that is there for the scanner and cameras mainly. In the lounge is the computer I use for general stuff, and then the other AMD E350 – both computers run Xubuntu as well. The two media player computers are both running Kodi which works very well.
One of the niceties of a proper media centre is that it isn’t limited to playing back files. With the libdvdcss2 library you can play back DVDs, and with the plugins supplied, YouTube videos can be played. So I have been playing a lot of Youtube stuff on the lounge media computer and it is good that Kodi is really easy to use. Both media players have Logitech cordless keyboards with built in trackpads and all my Logitech keyboards have keys to control media playback and volume.
The next task is to bring together the media library on the media PC in the bedroom, so that all the cds and dvd clips are all organised on it, so that I can then copy the library to the lounge media computer. At the moment I don’t have all of the DVDs I ripped recently and I suspect some of them are stored on the 2nd disk in the lounge media computer which was previously the Win81 PC and DVD ripper.
The long term plan is there would be one less computer in the living room, there would be no desk as now with a PC hanging off the bottom of it. Instead the small chassis (Antec) AMD350 would be parked in behind a big screen TV and would be used with that system to play stuff back. There is still a lot of Kodi I have not explored like the other types of media it can handle (mostly pictures) and heaps of addons for different video websites. I believe modules can also be installed for PVR type stuff but I have no intention of using these.