I have a couple of PCs connected to TVs for watching content from my Windows 2008 R2 server.

I trust me to not break things, so I want to have the linux PC run like the windows PC that was there before - I boot up, straight to desktop, open any folder on the server to which I'm authorized, and play the content - without being asked for a password.

Just boot, open, watch.

I've played around with Ubuntu and Mint cinnamon and mate. I cannot make any of these password free.

I can set up the automatic login. But I can't get rid of the damned Keyring password prompt.

I've tried dozens of solutions posted on various forums, none of them work. For the most part they talk about options that don't even exist on the distros I have tried.

Can anyone suggest a distro that will run VLC, and let me play content without being nagged for passwords.

Or how to fix this on Mint Cinnamon 15 which is currently installed.

thanks
tanya

gui may have an autologin feature. what kind of window manager you have?

Thanks for that,

Unfortunately, it still prompts for password.

I even tried removing all passwords.

And I reinstalled Mint last night to give me a fresh starting point, still the same problem.

Whatever is installed by default with each of the distros I've tried.

I have the auto-login feature enabled, but regardless of whether it is enabled or disabled, all attempts to access the windows shares results in a request for the keyring password.

I'm not very in-the-know either, so maybe this is a dumb question, but could you write a script that connects to the server (including sending the password), so all you have to do is click the script icon when you first boot the computer (or have it auto-run)?

Use smbnetfs with a credentials file to mount the shares on (auto)login.