[HN Gopher] KDE's official Roku/Android TV alternative is back f...
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KDE's official Roku/Android TV alternative is back from the dead
Author : bundie
Score : 115 points
Date : 2025-07-15 17:35 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.neowin.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.neowin.net)
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| The biggest thing they need to do is find a vendor that will sell
| devices with this on it, then figure out which Distro to set it
| up with.
|
| I would love an Arch or Debian based distro powering my TV
| streaming apparatus. In the meantime, I'll continue to use Apple
| TV since I'm in that ecosystem already, bit I'm always open for a
| true Linux TV experience if someone makes a small form factor
| Linux for TV device that lets me SSH into it if I really want to,
| but contains all the eye candy of a TV OS.
| MisterTea wrote:
| I have an AMD APU Linux PC hooked to my TV with a Logitech
| K400. Its a bit more fiddly than a throw away android based TV
| stick thing but you have complete freedom and control.
| m_t wrote:
| Would you care to share the specs?
|
| Any issue for streaming DRM content like netflix, or decoding
| high nitrate h265?
|
| Thank you !
| NewJazz wrote:
| An asrock deskmini would probably do. Anything zen2 or
| newer I'd be fine with personally.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Ryzen 5 4600G on an ITX board with 16GB RAM, 512GB NVMe and
| hard-wired gigabit. It's hooked to a ~40 inch Sony 1080p
| dumb TV via HDMI.
|
| I don't use fancy GUI media centers or anything, just a
| standard Debian XFCE desktop scaled up. Netflix and Hulu
| work just fine in Chrome and Firefox. No idea about 2k+
| performance due to 1080p limit. TV for me is mostly
| background noise so media quality is of no concern to me.
|
| My only gripe is once in a rare while the audio goes to
| shit and continually crackles but reboot and its fixed.
| bobson381 wrote:
| yep, k400 and a dell optiplex mini running debian with
| plasma. can stream, pull up youtube, cast to spotify,
| whatever. it rocks.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The problem is, _any_ streaming device that 's not fully locked
| down and blessed by the holy gods themselves (i.e. iPhone, un-
| rooted Android, Fire TV, Chromecast 4K, Apple TV) will not be
| able to get more than 720p/1080p quality. The streaming
| providers are really really nasty about that, no matter that
| enough ways exist to dump any and all shows in full quality
| anyway.
| newsclues wrote:
| Just need to support media servers like Plex and Jellyfin at
| 4K.
|
| In fact needing to access a streaming service, instead of a
| local server, sounds like a feature people don't need, even
| if it would be nice.
| rasmus-kirk wrote:
| At this point, I think pirating is more moral than actually
| paying for your digital media. The digital media scene for
| shows/movies is so incredibly hostile to consumers that not
| giving them money feels like the moral position. I don't
| feel it's necessarily the case for music (Qobuz) and
| especially games (GOG, hell even Steam). Not sure on books
| since I mostly read blogs, scientific articles (that
| definitely _should_ be pirated) and freely available
| math/crypto texts.
| newsclues wrote:
| Owning and running a local media server at home doesn't
| automatically make one a pirate, there is free content
| and some laws allow for ripping and streaming your copy
| to your tv or other device.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > I would love an Arch or Debian based distro powering my TV
| streaming apparatus.
|
| I'd prefer one of the immutable variants for that kind of
| appliance device. My personal bias is toward OpenSUSE MicroOS,
| but Debian or Arch based would also be good. (That doesn't mean
| you can't ssh in, just that there are more guardrails and the
| system can better self-maintain by default.)
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Immutable is a new part of the distro world for me I kind of
| want to like it but last time I tried to setup one of those
| Atomic distros it didnt really work for me, I appreciate them
| for what they are but it made me realize what I personally
| wanted was Arch, bleeding edge so I always have up to date
| software.
|
| Atomic distros would do it for me I think. Something very
| stable.
|
| Course atomic distros make me think of Debian more than
| anything ;)
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Atomic and update speed are orthogonal. And ex.
| https://blendos.co/ and https://arkanelinux.org/ are atomic
| Arch derivatives if that's your speed. (Not explicitly
| endorsing either, but they're there.)
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| I would not want to deal with anything and have a stable system
| so Fedora Atomics or a custom ublue image.
|
| https://github.com/ublue-os/image-template.
| grebnek wrote:
| Would be nice if valve released a steamOS box, steam big
| picture for gaming/game-streaming and Plasma big screen for
| other media. Like you know can use the plasma desktop on steam
| deck.
| MattTheRealOne wrote:
| This is great news. I am currently using regular Plasma on a mini
| pc with my TV, but it would be great having an optimized
| interface. That being said, without apps also being optimized, it
| would not be that significant of an improvement.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Which distro do you use? :)
| MattTheRealOne wrote:
| I am using Fedora Kinoite since I mostly just use Firefox on
| my TV, so the limitations of an atomic distribution are not
| relevant for my use case.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| To me it would be relevant to my use case since a TV box is
| not something I tinker with or want to have to worry about
| updates.
| WorldPeas wrote:
| currently using a NEC billboard with an OPS module and linux mint
| (not ideal, when the monitor connection sleeps, the audio turns
| off). This could be good, especially now that there are a dearth
| of 1.6b small models that could probably run on the SFP's APU
| (though I could be wrong)
| aquova wrote:
| Oh this is wonderful news. I had stumbled upon Plasma Bigscreen a
| few years ago, and while it looked like exactly what I wanted,
| development was pretty dead. I shall have to take a look at
| running it again, it would be great as a Roku alternative
| raffael_de wrote:
| How does this work? You write an ISO file on a USB stick and plug
| it into a TV? Or do you need something like an Amazon Fire TV
| stick with an HDMI plug? Does this project have a GitHub repo?
| bundie wrote:
| > Does this project have a GitHub repo?
|
| Here you go: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-bigscreen/
| MattTheRealOne wrote:
| This is just an interface for a Linux distribution. You would
| still need a computer plugged into the TV to run it on. I use a
| Beelink mini PC with mine, but I have not tried this interface
| yet.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I don't understand why so many TV interfaces waste the top half
| of the screen with nothing...
|
| Anyway a big flaw with custom smart TV OSes is that you won't
| ever get proper support for commercial services like Netflix and
| Prime. You can't even use Android apparently because it needs
| widevine nonsense that only commercial Android versions have.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I am pretty sure most netflix subscribers don't pay for the 4k
| enabled subscription anyway.
|
| Are their public stats somewhere?
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| I haven't found anything more reliable and performant than a
| nVidia Shield Pro plus Kodi
| imiric wrote:
| Nice! I currently run KDE on my HTPC, and I might give this a
| try. I hope it allows playing media with external players like
| mpv, instead of having its own media player. A way of loading
| remote libraries would also be welcome.
| stuaxo wrote:
| I have an Android TV and its pretty disappointing.
|
| If this can get some of the missing pieces sorted (like input
| from a remote, and a decent onscreen keyboard that works with
| it), it could be pretty decent.
|
| I could imagine using some Android TV apps with this via
| waydroid.
| shmerl wrote:
| Plasma Mobile didn't get far, but nice to see Plasma Big Screen
| progressing.
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(page generated 2025-07-15 23:01 UTC)