UPDATE: Well there have been problems with Kodi or VLC on Windows when playing Matroska format video files which are what I can produce with AviDemux when splitting DVD video files into tracks (can’t save MP4). Basically at a certain point of playback (this varies for each video but is always the same location for a particular clip) the video would stop momentarily and then resume itself a few seconds later, the sound also skipped. After trying lots of tweaks I decided I could just install Kodi onto my main PC and reconnect the TV to it as a third screen (since it has a quad head video card). So Kodi works better on Linux without giving these problems. So now I have one computer with three screens and one computer with one screen and that is how it is going to stay for now.
Linux So Far [2]
Obviously a bugbear of any platform is that the software you want to run isn’t always available for the platform and these days it is not unusual to have several computers running multiple platforms if you are a power user. I have had to maintain at least one Windows computer since I switched to Linux, but there is no way I would ever go back to solely Windows because there is so much good software available for Linux now that I have discovered it. Because there are technical limitations with virtualisation, having a physical computer box running Windows is essential rather than a VM, or the other way around.
As a result of identifying the preference to downsize the household to three computers instead of the five that it had up until very recently, it has been determined that the Intel DB75EN is the best hardware to be running the Windows computer on, rather than AMD E350 and this also enables one computer to be eliminated in the household. Recently also I have removed the second computer from the living room as longer term the expectation is a single small form factor HTPC will be the sole requirement there.
The DB75EN will be running Windows 8.1 indefinitely and will have the scanner and camera software installed as well as an Android emulator to enable it to be used with Instagram, and at this stage the Windows versions of Kodi and VLC will be installed along with a media library. It can also run Cobian Backup for all the backups that I do. I will be looking at which computer can run video editing software. After testing BlueStacks Android Emulator, I found it was difficult to use on my PC (which is a pretty powerful beast with 12 GB of RAM), so I uninstalled it and put Leapdroid on it, which has been much more useful with Instagram. However there have still been problems with all Instagram functionality being available so as far as I am concerned the use of the Android emulator to post Instagram content is severely limited and I will be going back to my original plan to buy an Android tablet instead.
The number of screens will be changed to two for each computer (the main PC had three up until this point, but there is no real need for the third one), and two of those screens will have a resolution of 1920×1080, the other two will be 1680×1050. The Xubuntu PC has the two screens side by side in landscape mode as usual; the Windows PC has the screens stacked vertically, with the lower screen at 1680×1050 being in a portrait orientation, and the upper screen at 1920×1080 being in the usual landscape orientation. The orientation of the lower screen works better in some situations such as editing documents or viewing Instagram content in a web browser because of the way some of these apps are optimised for vertical form factors such as a typical smart phone. With the second screen on this computer horizontal I have a choice of both form factors depending on need.
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