Had to do this at work and figured I’d share my notes here. Any usefulness these computers can get after their expected life is less money wasted.
- Download LibreElec (including the USB creator) and make yourself a flash drive.
- Before booting the flash drive, you’ll want to go into the BIOS and disable networking.
- On the computer I did this with (Dell Optiplex 3040), the setting to disable the network adapter was located under
System Configuration > Integrated NIC > Disabled. - This doesn’t prevent people from plugging in a USB ethernet adapter but at least it makes it clear that it’s not supposed to be connected to the internet.
- You might also want to set a BIOS password to prevent people from re-enabling it.
- Also would recommend putting an uncrimped RJ45 in as a dummy plug. May need a bit of “percussive maintenance” to get in.
- Let the flash drive boot automatically or type
installer and press Enter to continue. It might seem like it hung for a second but it is actually loading. - Install it. It will use up the whole disk, no special partitioning or anything.
- Remove the USB.
- You’ll need to manually choose the
reboot option once it’s finished. - Keep hitting
Next until you’re done with the welcome dialog. - Now to configure some options:
Interface Skin Configure skin... Main menu items - Turn off EVERYTHING in this section.
System Audio Audio output device: Change to whatever it needs to be.
Player Discs Attempt to skip introduction before DVD menu: On - If this option doesn’t show up, make sure
Advanced mode or higher is selected in the bottom left corner.
- Go back to the main menu.
- Insert a DVD.
- Click
Play Disc. - Make sure the audio works. If not, check your audio settings.
Notes
The reason we don’t enable DVDs playing automatically is because it triggers a pop-up menu. People have been complaining about this for well over a decade but it doesn’t seem like Kodi cares. Oh well!