Kodi
Free media centre that turns a computer into a TV box for your own films, TV shows and music.
Our verdict
Kodi on Linux is the same media centre you may already run on Windows. Team Kodi build it for Linux themselves, so you install it from your system's app store and carry on.
It is a full lounge room interface rather than a plain video player. You tell it where your films, TV episodes and music sit, it fetches the cover art and descriptions, and you browse it all on a big screen with a remote or a keyboard. Add-ons extend it, and the same skins and settings approach you know from Windows applies here.
If all you want is to open one video file, Celluloid or VLC will be quicker. If you have a drive full of media and a TV to plug into, Kodi is the reason people put Linux on a lounge room PC in the first place.
What's good
- The same app as on Windows, made by the same team, so nothing new to learn
- Big text and simple menus designed to be read from a couch with a remote
- Plays almost any video or music file you already have
- Free, with no account and no subscription
What to know first
- It comes with no films or shows of its own, you point it at your own files
- Setting up the library the first time takes patience
- Overkill if you only want to double click a video file and watch it
The details
- Cost
- Free
- Open source
- Yes (GPL-2.0)
- How you install it
- App store (Flatpak), .deb installer, Built-in app store
Windows apps it can replace
Last checked . Sources: