Comment Re:XBMC as a service? (Score 1) 146
Try OpenELEC then, it's an XBMC distro that runs perfectly well off a USB thumbdrive, and takes all of 15 minutes to install. It would at least make dual booting a snap.
Personally I use a relatively cheap, low power Zotac ZBOX to run XBMC (OpenELEC) permanently, and keep the noisy, power hungry 3D gaming machine turned off 99% of the time. Just the power savings alone would pay off the Zotac box in a few years.
Another vote for OpenELEC. I used to run XBMC on a small Asus box, but after having a bucket of water fall on it replaced it with a passively cooled Shuttle running OpenELEC. Install was a breeze, small footprint. Unlike XBMC it was almost fully functional from the first boot (note, hardware changed too which might have affected this). It made a samba share with config files, changing audio configuration was as simple as dragging a ready configuration file from one folder in the samba share to another and rebooting.
Basically it's of course the same thing, both are XBMC. OpenELEC just is the whole distro aimed at having a dedicated as light as possible linux installation dedicated to XBMC. It removes a majority of all configuration, boots really fast and just works.