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My setup is a pi4 with OSMC that is just Kodi all setup, plugged into hdmi with CEC to allow remote pass through.
That pi has an nfs mount to my jellyfin server and the movies and TV shows indexed off the NFS drive.
It's setup is so simple even our now 6 year old can put a movie on
I don't have much issues with Bluetooth in Linux, works just fine on my Kodi installs, audio, remotes the whole kit. But I can recommends the G60S Pro remote. It has both 2.4Ghz and Bluetooth so you don't have to rely on the Bluetooth if you don't want to. Flip it and it has a keyboard, incredibly useful!
Before that I ran CEC remotes (found is kind of meh), IR receiver (worked fine enough), and other 2.4Ghz remotes (MX3 variants, including a Bluetooth one).
I also use the companion phone app, Kore, on a Android.
Like others here I've been running Kodi for nearly 20 years, has amazing spousal approval rate. I just redid my setup, PXE boot a couple of Pis and an x86_64 machine (and Qemu for testing) it's a bit of a pain to share more than the libraries (my MySQL), but that's really more than most people want anyway (and I did manage to share almost everything with some NFS trickery, advance config path substitution, bind mounts, etc).
If you don't want to rely on Bluetooth, there are lots of keyboards, mice, and media remotes with dedicated dongles.
I use one of these, for example: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07ZKL66GY
Seconding this. I got the cheapest piece of shit 2.4ghz media controller thing from five below and it works flawlessly on both Ubuntu and Debian. Bluetooth might be a pita, but USB based stuff tends to work just fine as long as it doesn't need some weird proprietary software to enable functionality.
Get a mini PC with an intel n100 and get a flirc remote adapter. Low power, quiet and plays 4k content perfectly in Kodi
This is the way.
I use I think this one: http://www.riitek.com/product/254.html
It has orange buttons that you program to the TV (I have on/off, volume, and changing input source) then the white buttons and the direction pad to move around and play things in Kodi.
Ah damn, that doesn't have a backlight, does it?
No backlight, no. Realistically we are just using the direction arrows/ok circle part most of the time anyway, you can easily feel it in the dark. But I'm sure other similar products with a backlight exist. I went with this one as it's relatively cheap and has a keyboard on the back, but there are heaps of options.
I have one of these and it was quite good, but I don't know why but we just gravitated to a Logitech K400
I have one of these for the PC connected to the TV, but the LibreElec install works really well with the Rii i25, it's much easier to just scroll through and find what you want to play like on a smart TV.
I've been using a linux box auto-starting Kodi which is controlled by an MCE remote for about 10-15 years now. Both my partner (who is tech negative, seriously everyday they yell at their work laptop) and 5 year old kid at the time had no trouble with it. I personally love it. With the add-ons and such I've basically turned it in to a Home Entertainment Center. I've download Lutris and with a little tweaking I'm emulating a ton of old games and I've installed the Kodi add-on that lets me integrate Lutris to I don't have to leave the Kodi environment and bale to desktop is which is great. I've also got an add on in Kodi to open Steam in big picture straight from a button on my Kodi favorites. So I can go from playing Slay the Spire on Steam to watch an episode of Scrubs to playing Mario Kart Double Dash in Dolphin, all with out seeing the desktop.
On the other hand I haven't invested in one of those fancy remotes that lets me power on the PC so before I sit down I got turn on the PC which means the PC sits on a shelf in the living room. But to be honest we often leave it on for days on end, which I suspect racks up the power bills a bit, but lets me just turn on the TV and go. I also haven't invested in a HDMI - CEC set up so I have to have two remotes one for powering on the TV and a second for everything else. And getting Linux to recognize my 3.1 soundbar is a forking nightmare it still only see it as a stereo soundbar but hey it still sound good.
Over all I really love the Kodi HTPC set up for the heft of added home gaming stuff,but if you're looking for something more low profile I have a Raspberry PI running OpenElec stuck to the back of my bedroom TV with double-sided tape. OpenElec is a branch of the Kodi main steam for small PCs. The bonus on this is that the Pi's have built in CEC so you will only need the one remote.
The bare minimum viable is an AMD CPU of some description, and an AMD GPU that can at the very least decode h.264 and h.265; an FX-4300 or R3 4100+RX 550 combo would be a good example for the bare minimum viable Linux HTPC build, as Polaris cards like the RX 550 can decode h.264 and h.265.
Ideally, you'd have an AMD CPU and an AMD GPU or integrated graphics in the case of an APU, that in addition to decoding h.264 and h.265, can also at least decode VP9 if not also AV1; an R5 3400G would be a decent HTPC APU in that case since Vega integrated can decode VP9 in addition to h.264 and h.265.
Beyond the hardware, set up the appropriate hardware acceleration so you can decode video through VA-API, and then set up Kodi and get a cheap tablet to install Kore on and use that for a remote.
I think this is overkill. Recent AMD CPUs have integrated GPUs that are probably more than enough for video playback and recording. I would start with that and consider adding a discrete GPU only if the need arose.
The RX 550 is straight-up the lowest requirement for an HTPC as it will decode h.264 and h.265, which is the bare minimum requirement for that use case, so it's a 'Stick this in an old desktop you have laying around and there's your HTPC' kinda deal.
Recent AMD CPUs have integrated RDNA2 GPUs, with h.264 and h.265 decode/encode support. This has been the case for years. Buying an RX 550 for that purpose when the CPU already does it would be a waste of money, space, and electricity, and generate unnecessary heat and (eventually) e-waste.
If OP already has a spare CPU without that support built-in, then your suggestion might make sense, but I don't see any indication of that being the case.
I put Moode in a Raspberry Pi 4 and control it with my phone.
Think about it, what better remote do you want? You get album covers, lyrics, the works. You can even stream from your phone to the Pi.
kde connect has a really good media controller/wii joystick mouse thing for your phone
My needs are more centred around gaming but I built a SFF PC based around the 7800X3D, 9070XT and FormD T1 case (sub 10L) which sits under and connects to my TV and hifi system.
I'm therefore just using the TV as a monitor, and can access my NAS through the PC to play media directly from it, as well as game through Steam ofc. I've not had issues on BT with EndeavourOS but am looking forward to switching to the Steam Controller with it's reduced latency with multiple devices