[HN Gopher] Plasma Bigscreen - 10-foot interface for KDE plasma
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Plasma Bigscreen - 10-foot interface for KDE plasma
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 623 points
Date : 2026-03-06 23:59 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (plasma-bigscreen.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (plasma-bigscreen.org)
| DiJu519 wrote:
| What kind of "Remote" would one use to mimic say an Android TV
| box or normal cable company Set-Top experience?
| accurrent wrote:
| I use kde connect with my android for my htpc. Works nicely
| enough on stoxk kde.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| This is listed on the linked page. KDE makes the excellent KDE
| Connect. You can also use a TV remote, game controller, or
| keyboard and mouse.
| haunter wrote:
| Unified Remote with my phone https://www.unifiedremote.com/
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| There are many bluetooth remotes you can use for this. You may
| want one that has a built-in keyboard, or just one with arrows
| and a handful of buttons.
| drnick1 wrote:
| My suggestion would be an airmouse remote, possibly with an
| built-in keyboard. This is because sooner or later you will
| want to use a web browser to stream content, and a mouse is
| incredibly convenient for that.
| PufPufPuf wrote:
| I have this one, acts like a mouse (gyroscope) and keyboard
| (arrows, back, home, vol+- on the front side, almost-full
| qwerty on the back).
|
| https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006860823468.html
| herzzolf wrote:
| If your HTPC supports HDMI-CEC, it will just pass-through the
| inputs from the TV remote, no additional ones required.
| suprjami wrote:
| Look up "USB RF remote" on eBay. There are two common ones
| you'll see everywhere. I have one for my Kodi system.
| r14c wrote:
| I use KDE connect, it has a really nice remote input feature.
| olivierestsage wrote:
| Big things from KDE lately. If you haven't tried it since the
| pre-Plasma days, I really recommend giving it a go. Fabulous as a
| general DE.
| simonask wrote:
| Just did recently. I remembered KDE as flexible but cluttered.
| It's still flexible, but they really cleaned up nice!
| brendyn wrote:
| Try going in to edit mode you'll freak out if you not
| prepared
| Pxtl wrote:
| Good. The edit mode is exactly the place I want to be
| overwhelmed with options.
| cromka wrote:
| I did, but I don't share the sentiment. Moved this year from
| macOS and KDE is over-engineered with little thought put into
| the UX. For example, try to take a screenshot. I was quite
| literally shaking my head for good couple minutes looking at
| this abomination. It's so extremely confusing, all over the
| place, bogged down with tons of switches, modes, it's like you
| need to spend 30 minutes to understand how this thing works and
| all the Whys. Took me couple days to realize it was an actual
| Photo app in its screenshot mode. If only they spent some of
| their increasing budget on some proper UX usability testing and
| not rely on their people's gut feelings and a "that'll do"
| mentality...
|
| Meanwhile, Gnome just works exactly like you'd expect it to. I
| said it before already, but Gnome is for people moving from
| macOS and KDE is for ex-Windows veterans. And, for the record,
| I don't want to praise Gnome's overly-minimalistic approach,
| either, which too gets annoying when you have to find an
| extension for every stupid extra setting beyond the defaults.
| But, all in all, I much prefer it over KDE and wouldn't switch
| back. Not to mention the aesthetics, because there's no
| comparison if one shares the Apple/Braun ideals on design.
|
| A plot twist here is that I am also a KDE app developer...
| EnPissant wrote:
| I really like KDE plasma, it's the best DE out there once
| configured to mimick Gnome 2 / Mate, but I agree with you on
| screenshots! Also, Konsole required much configuration to be
| not way too busy.
|
| Other than that I don't have too many complaints.
| cromka wrote:
| I am absolutely certain they're headed in the right
| direction, but even some minimal Usability Testing would
| give them tremendous amount information on all the low-
| hanging fruit they could fix/optimize and substantially
| improve the on-boarding for newcomers.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| I'm on Debian bookworm, and a screenshot is one Meta-Shift-S
| -- I just highlight the region I want to capture, and I get a
| dialog prompting me to (with one click) copy to clipboard,
| save to file, or annotate. There's a handful of out-of-the-
| way options as well, depending on what exactly you want to
| do. What's --- so abominable about that?
| cromka wrote:
| OK, do me a favor and switch over to Gnome and try there.
| You'll see what I am talking about.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| If Gnome made their screenshot feature an app then it
| would be possible to just use it on any other desktop
| too, as is usually a strength of Linux. And it would then
| also be possible to add it to Gnome's dock, which wasn't
| doable last time I checked.
| djfergus wrote:
| Why does it need a dialog? Just save the file AND copy it
| to clipboard. If user wants to annotate they can paste or
| go get the file.
| hazebooth wrote:
| you can assign a shortcut to do just that?
| Timon3 wrote:
| I would be very annoyed if every screenshot I took was
| saved. I often take dozens of screenshots per day, and I
| save one maybe once a month. That means my screenshots
| folder only has meaningful entries. If everything was
| saved, I'd have to clean it up all the time.
|
| There might be a small misunderstanding regarding the
| "dialog". Once you've selected an area you're shown the
| outlines & can still modify them, and the buttons (Accept
| (for further editing in Spectacle), Save, Save As, Copy,
| Export) are shown below those outlines.
|
| This approach seems objectively superior to your
| suggestion.
| Barbing wrote:
| The meaningful entries get named for later searching
| while the rest are kept as my computer's little photo
| journal or something. Comes in handy a few times a year.
| cromka wrote:
| > I often take dozens of screenshots per day, and I save
| one maybe once a month
|
| Sounds borderline implausible. If anything, that's not a
| typical user user case by far.
| Timon3 wrote:
| > Sounds borderline implausible.
|
| Okay? Weird comment.
|
| > If anything, that's not a typical user user case by
| far.
|
| The scale may not be typical, but the pattern (many more
| screenshots copied to clipboard than saved as a file) is
| something I see across all kinds of users around me, be
| they technical or even very much non-technical.
|
| Let's not turn the defaults into "The Homer", okay?
| Allowing the user to choose their preferred action _in
| the same step as_ allowing them to change the outline
| doesn 't make things unnecessarily confusing, doesn't add
| unnecessary clicks, or anything else.
| abenga wrote:
| It does. If you paste (to slack, email, whatever) after
| taking a screenshot on Gnome, you will attach your
| screenshot. It is also saved on ~/Pictures/Screenshots.
| cromka wrote:
| That's the beauty of it, it just works.
| rjh29 wrote:
| You can just change the screenshot program you use, it's a
| keyboard shortcut. Flexibility and customisation is the best
| reason to use Linux after all.
| cromka wrote:
| Except that's exactly my point. You come to that DE, you
| don't want to modify and optimize every single nook and
| cranny. I mean sure, some do, but this is a vast minority.
| If Linux is to become truly popular desktop, it needs DEs
| like Gnome, aiming at those who are just fine with all the
| defaults curated for them.
| garciansmith wrote:
| Does Gnome have Desktop icons again by default? Because
| if not then no, it's not fine for people moving from
| Windows or Mac.
| microtonal wrote:
| Or system tray icons or application menus. I have used
| GNOME since forever, but it became barely usable. You can
| bring back most functionality with extensions, but they
| are very buggy.
| Timon3 wrote:
| Or minimize and maximize buttons, which are BY FAR one of
| the most "basic" features desktop users expect?
| cromka wrote:
| What you're talking here is what I mentioned: Gnome maybe
| goes too far with removing some functionality, but I
| personally haven't used desktop icons in like 10 years
| and, based on current macOS trend, neither does Apple bet
| on it. But I am talking about overcluttering and
| overcomplicating UX, not oversimplifying it. Both things
| can be true and my KDE complaints are about the former,
| because I was responding to someone else praising it.
|
| Your whataboutism doesn't invalidate my critique.
| garciansmith wrote:
| I think you are correct to state that KDE can still
| improve in a lot of ways. Although I personally find the
| new screenshot tools to be great: I now use them a lot
| more than I used to, especially to annotate things.
|
| I was responding to your belief that somehow Gnome is
| better or that "Gnome just works exactly like you'd
| expect it to," as you stated. My point is that it does
| not. And you might not find Desktop icons useful, but I
| (and millions of other people!) use them every day and
| have for decades. I could drag and drop icons on the
| desktop of my family's first computer, a Mac that ran
| System 7 in the early 1990s. And then our Windows 95 box.
| And then Windows 98, and 2000, and XP, and a laptop that
| ran Vista. And then that laptop running Ubuntu with Gnome
| 2, and then Ubuntu Unity, and then Gnome 3... until Gnome
| decided, nope, sorry!
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > If Linux is to become truly popular desktop, it needs
| DEs like Gnome
|
| Linux has a DE like GNOME. How many DEs like GNOME does
| it need?
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Yeah, and more DEs like GNOME will just take devs away
| from GNOME, and GNOME will regress. There aren't tons of
| avilable open-source devs who have the skill necessary to
| create a DE.
|
| There's a lot of "we need this" "we need that" in the
| open-source world. But when you look at all the
| limitations objectively, we've already reached the
| highest point we can achieve.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The nice thing about Linux is that there's a DE or WM for
| everyone. Personally I can't imagine running a whole desktop
| environment when all I want is to draw some windows and a
| status bar. But, to each their own!
| F3nd0 wrote:
| What Photo app are you referring to? On Debian Trixie, I just
| get the screenshot app, Spectacle. It shows the screenshot it
| just took, tells me where it's been saved, lets me do stuff
| with it, and lets me take another one. It could do with a
| facelift, but it's fairly clear, really. I wonder if they
| changed it later or if the distribution you used deviated
| from the defaults.
| bscphil wrote:
| I believe they changed the app since Trixie was released
| (Trixie has KDE 6.3, the changes were in 6.4) and buried a
| lot of the really common settings behind menus. E.g. you
| might want to take a screenshot on a delay, and that's now
| hidden behind a menu whereas they used to surface the most
| common features on a panel.
| tapoxi wrote:
| I just hit printscreen and save, I think you may be confusing
| your familiarity with a system with user friendliness.
|
| For comparison, MacOS doesn't have a printscreen key, it's
| command-shift-3 or command-shift-4. Much more confusing to
| newcomers in my experience.
| cyberrock wrote:
| Spectacle used to just let you automatically save with no
| confirmation dialog, then they changed that a year or so
| ago. Maybe it's still possible to configure it but I was
| less than happy to have my default changed.
| fxde wrote:
| I don't get how this can lead to confusion. You can hit
| PrintScr, draw a rectangle and hit save, or enter
| "screenshot" into the bottom left menu, rectangle, save.
| There you can also see the common options with shortcuts for
| "Full Screen" etc, at least on openSUSE Tumbleweed. I would
| assume that is the default behaviour.
| himata4113 wrote:
| What are you talking about, spectacle is everything I want in
| a screenshot tool and I do not want it to be any other way.
| If you want something that just takes a picture then you
| might as well go back to 2012.
| wao0uuno wrote:
| So you chose the outstanding screenshot utility to highlight
| the problems with KDE Plasma interface? Really? Why not
| something like this?: https://files.catbox.moe/uvxbea.png
| dddgghhbbfblk wrote:
| I recently installed Fedora with KDE Plasma on a new computer
| and I can't say I feel the same way. The UI is still clunky (eg
| the file explorer is clunky) and I'm running into minor bugs
| pretty regularly. Windows will be sized incorrectly after a
| restore sometimes (failing to take into account the bar I added
| at the top), switching between multiple windows of the same
| program and a separate program seems non-deterministic, random
| UI components occasionally crash and restart.
|
| I don't want to be negative for the sake of it but I constantly
| read these really positive comments about Linux on the desktop
| (in general or in specifics) and it gave me a false impression
| of what to expect. Not the first time I've fallen for this
| either over the years.
| WD-42 wrote:
| There's a reason GNOME is the default for most of the major
| distributions.
| 306bobby wrote:
| I've had twice the issues with GNOME as I have with KDE or
| Cinnamon
|
| I think it all really depends on the wants and workflows of
| the user
| Narushia wrote:
| Obviously. Now think of the wants and workflows of your
| average user and is starts to make sense.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| It's rare to see a perfectly stable desktop UI in general.
| Even on my Mac and iPhone minor bugs are almost a daily
| occurrence. But KDE especially is a combination of huge scope
| and limited resources, whenever I used it there was always
| something obviously unpolished.
| AnonHP wrote:
| How is it on older or budget hardware though? It's been a long
| time since I tried KDE, and in between even worked with Xfce
| because Gnome was a bit more resource intensive. Is it still
| the case that in terms of hardware specs and demand of the
| hardware, KDE needs/uses more than Gnome? I guess Xfce will be
| in a different league capability wise and resource requirement
| wise.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I'm running it on a ~15 year old Intel NUC.
|
| It's got 4GB RAM and a modest Intel i3.
|
| KDE runs flawlessly. While modern web browsers struggle with
| more than a few tabs open.
| dvdgsng wrote:
| If that counts for you, but I've just used it with CachyOS on
| a 2017 XPS with no issues and performance was great.
| pabs3 wrote:
| Running it on a dumpsterd PC with a 2013 Intel CPU. Works
| fine.
| hedora wrote:
| I use LXDE on my new boxes, but on a 15 year old machine I
| wasn't sure what the Linux distro had defaulted to. I was
| surprised to see it was KDE. That machine takes 30 sec to
| decrypt the disk encryption key (stupid proof of work
| functions!), but the desktop environment is as snappy as LXDE
| on high-end 2026 machines.
|
| I haven't compared those two with XFCE recently, but they all
| seem fine these days.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| AIUI, they actually really made an effort to improve on that
| front, to the point that KDE is actually really good about
| resource use these days, which is eg. why it was picked as
| the default for the pinetab 2.
| bpye wrote:
| I run it on my RK3588 based MNT Pocket Reform. I have to
| force the GL ES 2 backend because of, presumably, Panfrost
| bugs, but otherwise it runs well despite the fairly weak CPU
| and GPU.
| monegator wrote:
| define older? no problem on my 2012 macbook
| Oanid wrote:
| I'd have to disagree with you on that one. I recently migrated
| to Fedora from Windows 11, which gave me the chance to try
| Plasma, GNOME, and a couple other desktops.
|
| Plasma is exactly what I don't want in a DE. It's extremely
| configurable, but also overwhelming, and I don't think that's
| something the average user would feel comfortable navigating.
|
| I ended up choosing GNOME. It feels visually cohesive, and the
| design is much more opinionated -- they've clearly made
| decisions about what should and shouldn't be part of the core
| desktop experience.
| vrighter wrote:
| so just.... don't reconfigure it?
| shevy-java wrote:
| If the defaults work: sure. Do they, though?
|
| I don't mind changing things on KDE, but the defaults are
| useless to me. Too many annoying things, all those time-
| wasting gimmicks, on-hover uselessness. It is clearly
| written for another target audience, e. g. Average Joe
| coming from Windows. While that is fine perhaps for those
| users, to me the default is useless. And I think many
| others feel in a similar way. To me the defaults in GNOME
| are even worse though, so it is a lose-lose scenario. But
| things can be configured, so that problem can be solved for
| most settings or behaviour; I am just not convinced that
| sticking to the defaults works that well.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Yes, they do. I've used Plasma on a couple of computers
| for a while, and the defaults have always been fine for
| me.
| monegator wrote:
| what defaults didn't work for you? i only removed the
| floating panels (screw those) and changed the shortcut
| for konsole. Done.
| Symbiote wrote:
| My guess is many KDE users have one or two adjustments
| they make, but we're all different.
|
| I add a "keep window above others" button to the window
| title bar and set the "menu" key on my keyboard to be
| Compose.
| 306bobby wrote:
| That's the problem I have with most DE talks though
|
| People act like these issues are going to "stop the Linux
| migration" or otherwise, and then they give examples of
| things that most users will never do/isn't even possible
| on windows / mac
|
| It feels like most people don't like some DE's just
| simply because it's not what they're used to, not because
| there is actually a problem with them
| shevy-java wrote:
| I settled down for Fluxbox back when it was still actively
| maintained. Ever since its death I have been using IceWM,
| mostly because it is so much faster than GNOME or KDE-Plasma.
| I think both KDE and GNOME went into the wrong direction
| though. GNOME because it forces everyone into the shell-
| centric way to use a computer, similar to a smartphone (the
| whole UI constantly reminds me of a cloned OSX smartphone
| interface, for GNOME3 that is; mate-desktop is more of a
| desktop-centric UI but sadly the project slowed down
| immensely in the last few years, aka becoming more and more
| inactive really). KDE indeed has too many configure-options,
| but the defaults are more similar to the 1990s desktop-
| centric era shaped by Microsoft. I like that approach more
| than GNOME although in the last few years KDE also went the
| wrong way, largely due to Nate, David Edmundson ("our destiny
| is systemd"; that reminds me of Firefox "you must have
| pulseaudio for audio on youtube", how strange I can hear
| audio via chromium/thorium just fine, so what are the Mozilla
| devs thinking here ... not much, that is for sure) etc...
| monegator wrote:
| Dude, default plasma breeze theme, remove rounded corners,
| you have the windows 10 interface. What else do you want?
| lunar_rover wrote:
| > What else do you want?
|
| No alignment issues, menus sorted by professional
| designers, easier to learn UX like ribbon menus and a lot
| more.
|
| Feel like the design issues stem from it being shaped by
| existing power users. Familiarity tend to downplay design
| issues so stability took priority, even though the UX never
| should've been stabilised in the first place.
| wao0uuno wrote:
| I just want less of this:
| https://files.catbox.moe/uvxbea.png
|
| Look at it and tell me this is normal. I love Plasma but oh
| man do they need to hire a real designer. Someone with
| balls to unfuck the interface and move all advanced
| settings out of GUI into a well documented config file.
| aquariusDue wrote:
| While I prefer deeply nested menus (and I acknowledge I'm
| a weirdo at that) there's plasma-manager if you happen to
| use Nix and home-manager. I don't know if it will help in
| that specific case but if you'd rather have the config in
| a well documented file this could generally help.
|
| https://github.com/nix-community/plasma-manager
| wao0uuno wrote:
| Nothing wrong with nested menus. The problem is that
| plasma has a classic File menu inside of a hamburger menu
| hidden under a "More" button with a whole set of
| duplicated options that can be found in other parts of
| the interface. It's nuts.
|
| I'd rather have all that mess removed and settings 1% of
| the user base "needs" moved to a config file. I don't
| want to add an another layer of complexity with external
| configuration tools.
| ufmace wrote:
| That seems a bit contrived to me. Okay, that particular
| place is pretty deeply nested, but it's clearly a regular
| menu tucked away in there, with a option to show the menu
| bar. If you turn that on, then those options are half as
| deep. Or if you don't need to adjust those options, you
| don't go that deep.
|
| The sibling comment, meanwhile, is complaining about
| extra space devoted to explicit controls for all of the
| extra options. Well, you can't have it both ways. If you
| want to have a lot of features and options, you have to
| either devote some space in the main UI to them, or have
| a lot of deeply nested menus like that.
|
| Or I guess you could do a config file somewhere, but IMO
| that's even worse. If we're going to complain about bad
| UIs, isn't it even worse than some deeply nested menus to
| need to open a separate file somewhere else with a
| separate program and learn whatever config file syntax
| they happen to use.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Here's an example: https://imgur.com/a/konsole-vs-ghostty-
| tR4Otmy
|
| Konsole on left, ghostty (which is gtk) on right. The
| latter has at least 3 additional lines visible outputting
| the same command. The giant copy paste buttons, tab bar
| which wastes a ton of space, are typical of kde apps. The
| klutter isn't just visually annoying it makes the apps less
| useful.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Honestly this is the only complaint I agree with. KDE
| plasma desktop and its configurability looks and feels
| great... but all their in house actual windowed
| applications like Konsole and Kate are mediocre at best.
| All that duplicated effort seems wasteful.
| array_key_first wrote:
| It's honestly just Konsole. Kate is very good, you can
| legitimately use it as a vscode replacement if you want.
| Dolphin is also the best file manager and it's not even
| close.
|
| And then kmail... kmail is bad.
| WD-42 wrote:
| I wonder how much QT has to do with this. AFAIK the only
| _decent_ bindings are still C++ and Python. For KDE it
| might just be C++?
|
| There's plenty of valid criticism of GTK but choosing C
| over C++ isn't one of them. It seems like there is a new
| Rust GTK app every week, and other languages as well,
| thanks to the availability of bindings.
|
| I'm curious how long relying on C++ contributions is
| going to last.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| I don't see how Plasma is any easier or harder to navigate
| than Windows. If you find the customizations overwhelming,
| then just... don't. It's fine in its stock form. I turn off
| the top-left corner thing and leave everything else alone.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Omg yes the top left corner thing is imho the only complete
| misfeature in stock plasma.
| yoavm wrote:
| Thank you for saying this. Power users love to complain about
| how GNOME took away many settings and options, and just made
| some hard decisions. I left GNOME many years ago since I miss
| these options, but I'm going to refer to your comment the
| next time people complain about the direction they took:
| there clearly is an audience of people that simply don't care
| about customizing every bit of their desktop environment, and
| GNOME is targeting exactly them. It's an audience we must
| cater to if we want Linux on the desktop to be successful.
| jorvi wrote:
| Not only that, because it has so many options and more of a
| bazaar-style development, nothing is optimized.
|
| Right now the systray has a very ugly delay when opening
| applets like WiFi or sound. Up to 1.5 seconds (!). This
| doesn't happen with the applets bare in the menu bar, so
| there must be some sort of negative interaction there between
| the systray code and applet code.
|
| This is on a bog standard KDE install too.
|
| I don't like Gnome's high and mighty attitude either,
| especially because it chases people away from making bug
| reports or contributing. And when 90%+ of your users uses a
| particular extension (Dash to Dock), maybe make that
| behaviour integrated and the default.
|
| At this point my hope is squarely aimed at PopOS' COSMIC
| environment.
| IshKebab wrote:
| That's definitely a bug. It's instant for me.
|
| But I do think some of the systray things are overly
| complicated. E.g. why does the volume widget list all audio
| outputs and inputs by default?
|
| On the other hand some things are really great. E.g. which
| other DE lets you adjust the screen brightness (the real
| one via DDC/CI) from the systray, or start video screen
| capture by pressing print screen?
|
| KDE is definitely better than gnome at this point.
| gucci-on-fleek wrote:
| > E.g. which other DE lets you adjust the screen
| brightness (the real one via DDC/CI) from the systray, or
| start video screen capture by pressing print screen?
|
| Both of these work for me on Gnome 49.
| aquariusDue wrote:
| I've encountered the same KDE bug in NixOS though from
| what I understood when I did some digging[0][1] it
| doesn't manifest on distros like Fedora.
|
| Now I'm using Cinnamon until the bug gets fixed which I
| enjoy too but it doesn't come close to the ease of use of
| KDE. And when I say ease of use on KDE I refer to the
| fact that out of the box you can pretty much do
| everything you need to without having to search for
| extensions or hunt for settings, someone already thought
| of what you wanted to do and made it straightforward to
| do. Sure it's overwhelming to be presented with a lot of
| things at once e.g. the screen capture UI but when you
| need to do something that's not the base case it's easy
| to see that the UI has got you covered.
|
| [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/1pdtc3v/kde_
| plasma_i...
|
| [1]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/126590
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| I can't agree more, I wish Linux had some good desktop
| environment.
|
| It's fine giving lot of customization but the default got
| to be good, and at the opposite (gnome) it's fine to give
| no customization option as long as it's well thought out
| and makes sense.
|
| Sadly, it's neither the case.
|
| The best I could find was cinnamon desktop, they're not too
| bad.
| prmph wrote:
| I couldn't disagree more.
|
| I have found KDE excellent and intuitive from the get go
| without much customization. To me GNOME is very primitive in
| comparison and ugly too.
|
| KDE is the DE that made shed the bias again linux UIs as
| having that crummy look that set them apart from commercial
| desktops.
|
| Sure it has issues (which mostly crop up when you are doing
| deep customization) but for the basics I don't even think any
| other Linux DE come close.
| Narushia wrote:
| Never expected someone to call GNOME straight up ugly. IMO
| it's currently the most stylish DE out there by far
| (comparing to the default look of other DEs). Opinions,
| huh.
| Oanid wrote:
| GNOME is stylish, but what really sells it for me is that
| the apps match the aesthetic and feel cohesive.
| Oanid wrote:
| I won't disagree with you, KDE is certainly usable from a
| clean install. But calling GNOME primitive in comparison
| feels off to me. It was actually KDE's applets and overall
| fit and finish that pushed me toward GNOME.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Really? I found KDE plasma hit the perfect sweet spot between
| the slapdash nature of Cinnamon and the polished but
| restrictive Gnome.
|
| Plus AFAIK it's the most multi threaded so it's the hardest
| to freeze.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| I totally agree it's not for the average user but I'm not an
| average user. That's why I like it so much. I love the way I
| can make my computer work the way I want it, rather than
| being stuck with someone else's design decisions and having
| to adapt to them (I really hate opinionated design). My KDE
| is customized heavily though I never needed to use addons
| because it's so configurable.
|
| I really like this about KDE. And the number of options isn't
| in the way. When I'm thinking of something new to do there's
| usually an option for just that that I'd never seen before. I
| love software like that that feels way ahead of me, almost
| anticipating my wishes.
|
| Gnome on the other hand, their developers have this attitude
| of "you shouldn't want to do this". I don't like software or
| other people telling me what to do. I'm sure their stuff is
| based on UI principles but those are made for the masses too.
| I only care about what works for me.
|
| But yeah I'm a power user, that's not for everyone. I love
| that KDE exists though. And it's great that you like gnome,
| that's the power of Linux/FOSS.
|
| The only thing I object to is when people claim Linux should
| get one standard UI (and then they usually want that to be
| gnome). That's not ok for me. But it's also impossible to
| enforce anyway.
| 9dc wrote:
| but it will be hard to play DRM protected media, eg Netflix on a
| device like this, right?
| trueismywork wrote:
| 720p using widevine. I play it. It works. Even if I disable DRM
| in my main browser. And only isolate it to my Netflix account.
| haunter wrote:
| You can get 1080p on Linux with Opera
| https://help.netflix.com/en/node/30081
| SahAssar wrote:
| Weird, why just on opera? It uses the same engine
| (chromium) as many other browsers.
| h4ch1 wrote:
| I'm guessing because of a higher widevine certification
| level or a server-side policy?
|
| You can also spoof Opera's user agent and get 1080p on FF
| so guessing it's a server-side thing; since Linux has L3
| widevine certification because no kernel level TEE
| godelski wrote:
| I have no issues on Firefox FWIW. I haven't needed to
| spoof the user agent, though this is something I needed
| to back in the day when they literally blocked FF's user
| agent.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| Is that through a dedicated Netflix profile or is there a way
| to enable DRM per site?
| himata4113 wrote:
| the magic trick is just to not, netflix won't even stream you
| 4k 90% of the time even if you do have all the requirements.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| why won't they?
| drnick1 wrote:
| This is just a DE for Linux, it does not solve the problem that
| DRM is incompatible with a free platform. Get your content from
| another source than Netflix.
| cromka wrote:
| If this can run AndroidTV apps (don't see why it couldn't), then
| it can be a hit.
| drnick1 wrote:
| Bigscreen is just basically a DE. To run Android apps on Linux
| you can use Waydroid. But yes, you can absolutely combine
| Bigscreen, Waydroid and a few other apps such as VacuumTube and
| Steam in fullscreen mode to create the ultimate free/libre
| streaming/gaming console.
| mongol wrote:
| VacuumTube is fantastic
| kingo55 wrote:
| Are there existing alternatives to this? I use KDE, but I have
| also heard Steam OS has something similar.
| himata4113 wrote:
| steamos is just kde.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| SteamOS uses KDE for their "desktop" session, but does their
| own thing for the normal gaming mode.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Just to manage expectations: Big Screen is a fairly old project
| at this point, that has always had a relatively small number of
| people showing it some love (though I understand recently there's
| been an uptick again). This is not a new product announcement
| from us, nor a key focus of the community. That is not the
| disparage the work being done there in any way, but this most
| likely isn't quite Kodi just yet.
| drnick1 wrote:
| > but this most likely isn't quite Kodi just yet.
|
| Kodi is incredibly limited though, and does not come close to
| the flexibility of Plasma Bigscreen. The latter is just a UI
| optimized for using a PC from a couch, which means that you can
| use any regular desktop app, including Kodi, web browsers for
| streaming content, and Steam for playing games. Kodi on the
| other hand does not even allow you to play YT videos without
| using some buggy add-on that requires registering an API key
| with Google (no thanks).
| wao0uuno wrote:
| Also Kodis interface is terrible. I couldn't make a more
| convoluted and hard to navigate interface for TVs even if I
| tried.
| darkwater wrote:
| Well, you can change the UI theme and that can change it
| radically on the UX side. The global navigation paradigm of
| Kodi, which is aimed at making every plugin and feature
| browsable in the same way (drill down menus basically)
| won't change though
| wao0uuno wrote:
| I know but those add-ons are:
|
| - Very often untrusted third party software downloaded
| via a forum link.
|
| - Have no guarantee of long term support.
|
| - Are another layer of complexity to learn and maintain
| which is completely not in line with what a TV interface
| should be.
| j1elo wrote:
| As a Kodi user, I must say it is very good on its core, and
| very bad on the addons side (which arguably is the part for
| which it gets recommended mostly)
|
| It forces its limited model of text-based folders-with-files
| to everything. Also it's all Python, and I don't know if it's
| me but I always find quality issues first in Python projects
| than anything else. Error control is usually very lacking,
| and it's so frequent to see error pop-ups showing on here and
| there. You enter a menu and the first entry selected is ".."
| which is to go back to the previous menu (poor UX). All in
| all, Kodi for me has always been a player with good tech (it
| all basically works, surround sound, codecs, integration with
| hardware, etc), exposed as very amateurish UI experiences.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Could this same kind of interface have potential for use in the
| handheld console form factor? The gamepad-like buttons on a
| handheld are often reminiscent of those on a TV remote control.
| The handheld generally adds touchscreen control, but this feels
| like it might be comparatively easy to account for. Of course,
| ultimately we'd probably want to see something that's sort of
| halfway between this Bigscreen and Plasma Mobile. Perhaps a new
| project altogether?
| sfRattan wrote:
| You could probably just try this on a Steam Deck. SteamOS is
| just a custom atomic spin of Arch, with full KDE already
| installed (switch to Desktop mode), and the device is a
| touchscreen. I don't have mine in front of me at the moment,
| but I imagine Plasma Bigscreen is already in the Arch or AUR
| repositories.
| shevy-java wrote:
| Ah - that just answers the question I asked above then (e. g.
| two minutes ago), meaning there is no donation-daemon running,
| if it is an old project. Very interesting.
| sho_hn wrote:
| The module that does the annual donation thingie should also
| load here, there isn't really any differentiation by the
| shell package as it's handled elsewhere via a mechanism
| that's agnostic to it.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Yeah, it's sad; this is probably exactly what I _want_ to use,
| but it isn 't really in a good state yet. Thankfully, just
| normal KDE works fine on my TV for now:)
| ognarb wrote:
| To be fair. Plasma BiScreen is now lead by Devin Lin which has
| done a amazing job moving Plasma Mobile once the initial
| sponsor of it turned its interest somewhere else. So i am quite
| happy to see the progress there :)
| pixelmelt wrote:
| Wow this is big, what's the best device/remote stack to use it
| with?
| drnick1 wrote:
| For streaming, any mini-PC (e.g. N100 or a used thin client)
| paired with an airmouse remote (I use a Pepperjobs remote). If
| you want to use Steam on that machine and play modern games
| however, then you basically need a gaming PC and an Xbox
| controller.
| godelski wrote:
| This is really cool and I'd love to see TVs ship with it. There's
| a lack of innovation these days and I think the only way to bring
| it back is to recognize that computers are environments and
| people need to be able to build on them. With TVs becoming more
| powerful this could be a big win.
|
| Make it easy so my aging tech illiterate parents can use it
| (looks like it does the job, at least as well as any other) but
| also hackable for people like us, to fix bugs and drive
| innovation.
|
| My TV is currently a monitor for my computer, so something like
| this even works for me in the same way steam big picture does.
| For work, I ssh in. One thing that helps is I use ydotool and my
| phone and laptop can easily be a keyboard
| socalgal2 wrote:
| This sounds awesome but reading the comments it sounds not quite
| there yet?
|
| Right now I use an AppleTV with Kodi installed via developer
| account. Unfortunately, Kodi on AppleTV is not well supported so
| it crashes a ton. I'm not much of an Apple dev. After much
| gnashing of teeth I managed to get a from source build running so
| I could maybe look into why it crashes and contribute but I've
| never debugged an AppleTV app and even trying to switch to using
| the simulator which I suspect is better for debugging, I couldn't
| figure it out.
|
| But, quite often I just wish to get some other small box for
| Kodi. Except I don't want 2 boxes, one for Kodi and one for other
| proprietary apps (Crunchyroll, Twitch, Netflix, ...)
|
| Any suggestions?
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Claude ?
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Thanks for the push. It worked.
| J_tt wrote:
| I've just moved from Kodi on a Linux box to Jellyfin and Infuse
| on an Apple TV, so far fantastic experience
| s0rce wrote:
| I also moved from Kodi to Jellyfin. I have an ubuntu machine
| as the server and an Nvidia shield with Android connected to
| the TV as a client. Works great and was much simpler to keep
| working right than Kodi. Although Kodi didn't need any server
| side software except SMB shares.
| ritlo wrote:
| Same set-up here. Had tried many times over something like 15
| years to get Kodi/XBMC working well. Nobody else could/would
| ever use it (the UI is _so_ bad) and I bet I spent about 50%
| as much time screwing around to set it up and maintain it as
| I ever spent watching stuff on it.
|
| Jellyfin, at first with the official client on Roku then on
| Infuse on AppleTV when x265 hardware decoding started
| becoming a requirement (my server is too weak to transcode)
| has been everything I wanted Kodi to be. Web interface is
| great, I share it with a couple friends over Tailscale. Wife
| and kids and visitors use Infuse, no problem, no complaints,
| no help needed. My use-to-fiddling ratio is probably
| literally 100x better than with Kodi. I have spent overall
| less total time messing with it than with Kodi, even
| including figuring out solutions for things like YouTube
| videos.
| hapticmonkey wrote:
| Depends what you use Kodi for. If it's for accessing media
| files on a network drive, Infuse is the "gold standard" media
| player for the AppleTV.
|
| It's not free, though. But it's far more stable and nicer to
| use than Kodi ever was in my experience. I ran Kodi for my home
| theatre for years but switched to AppleTV+Infuse and never
| looked back.
|
| For free (and open source!) options you can use the Swiftfin
| tvOS app and a Jellyfin media server.
| zos_kia wrote:
| If you have an Android box, you can set Kodi as the launcher
| (so the home button will always take you to Kodi home). It has
| a section that lists Android apps and lets you run them from
| there.
|
| It's a bit backwards but I did it for years, and it works
| really well if you're ok with the Kodi experience.
| wao0uuno wrote:
| "Kodi on AppleTV is not well supported so it crashes a ton"
|
| That's just Kodis default behavior on any platform.
| The_President wrote:
| Kodi is stable - This assertion must be limited to hardware
| at your disposal. File a bug report.
| amelius wrote:
| Now we only need a TV that doesn't send screenshots back to the
| vendor.
| drnick1 wrote:
| This is easy, don't connect your TV to the Internet and use it
| as a monitor for a mini PC running Plasma Bigscreen.
| amelius wrote:
| If enough people do this, new TVs will stop working without
| an internet connection.
| drnick1 wrote:
| If enough people do this, and refuse to buy TVs that do not
| work without an Internet connection, manufacturers will get
| the message and not make such TVs.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| > don't connect your TV to the Internet
|
| 5G fixes this
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah, in the future all TVs will be like high end cars
| today.
| drnick1 wrote:
| Don't buy such a TV, or mod it by removing the cellular
| modem. Same problem with cars, but generally quite easily
| solved.
| functionmouse wrote:
| I've got Windows 7 at 125% running on a 70some inch TV off a tiny
| Optiplex Micro with an i3 or something, and a fork of modern
| Firefox for w7, hardware accel and all. I use my phone as a
| bluetooth touchpad/keyboard with an app that was maybe 5 bucks.
| Best 10-foot interface I've ever used. Everything works exactly
| as expected, no fuss, no gotchas, no friction, no workflow-
| breaking updates. And I never lose the remote!
|
| This (plasma-bigscreen) is going to fail, as 10-foot interfaces
| historically do. It is a waste of good developer time and focus.
|
| Free Desktop people keep obsessing over ill-advised moonshots as
| a form of escapism; no one wants to address the fundamentally
| broken core desktop model. Papercut bugs are boring and solving
| them is thankless. Working on a shiny new TV mode interface looks
| better on a resume. Meanwhile the rest of the world is pulling
| their hair out over Windows 11 and macOS Tahoe because there are
| still no feasible alternatives for normal human beings.
| gzread wrote:
| If 10foot is ill-advised then why do you use one?
| cromka wrote:
| So... Steam TV Box confirmed?
| whateverboat wrote:
| KDE is the best DE out there.
| himata4113 wrote:
| "Built on Modern Linux Technologies"
|
| > D-bus
|
| alright!
|
| on a more serious note, should remove that incase that was put
| there by AI.
| phanimahesh wrote:
| Wait dbus isn't considered modern? What's the alternative these
| days?
| himata4113 wrote:
| There's not, but it's also a very very old technology -
| definitely not 'modern' linux.
|
| It has a lot of problems especially with protocol
| standartization and permissions. You can tell something and
| you might get something back or you might listen for
| something and get garbage instead.
|
| The maker of hyprland has shipped an alternative though.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46278857
| aidenn0 wrote:
| If I had to guess, I would guess that this statement was put
| there before ChatGPT existed.
|
| [edit]
|
| Unless this text was buried deeper than the front page and then
| promoted, I was wrong. That language was not there last
| November according to archive.org
| em3rgent0rdr wrote:
| Too bad can't access $CorpStreamingVideoService full-resolution
| on linux :(
| drnick1 wrote:
| Get your videos from other sources.
| jcelerier wrote:
| I'm really wondering about what is that ASIO4ALL uninstaller
| doing in there
| while_true_ wrote:
| "Plasma" is an awkward name for a television app. First image
| that comes to mind is the old plasma 50-inch I used to have. Damn
| thing weighed nearly 100 pounds and was really power-hungry.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| "Plasma" isn't the name of the television app. It's "Big
| Screen".
|
| "Plasma" just refers to the desktop environment:
| https://kde.org/plasma-desktop/
|
| So this is a "Big Screen" UI for KDE Plasma.
| 64738 wrote:
| Yes! I still use my Panasonic 50" plasma as my daily driver. I
| still love it, it's an amazing TV :D
| cheeze wrote:
| I loved my Plasma TV.
|
| Bought it as an intern dirt cheap off of some dude at my
| company who posted it in a email group. He upgraded to the
| latest and greatest and just wanted it hauled out. Picture
| quality (for the time) was incredible!
|
| It also doubled as the worlds best space heater. My god it was
| power hungry.
| ehnto wrote:
| Super cool, I have been extremely pleased with my switch to KDE.
| I have used MacOS as a daily, I have used Windows 95-Win10, I
| have used various linux distros all for long periods of time at
| work and home.
|
| KDE Plasma has really hit the sweetspot for me, it's super usable
| daily and still has easy customisability. Thanks to all the
| effort poured into Proton I have even replaced my gaming PC with
| Arch/KDE plasma with really very little stress.
|
| I am VR gaming, on linux, on AAA titles, with no messing around,
| if this isn't the year of linux desktop then it will never be.
| akshatjiwan wrote:
| KDE is amazing. For an open-source project the desktop
| environment looks really slick. Not that any other desktop
| environments are particularly ugly but KDE can compete with the
| best commercially developed desktops.
|
| For a moment though I thought that this story was about the
| launch of a new plasma TV 'big screen' and it got me really
| excited.
| dboon wrote:
| Yes! KDE is the only thing in the Linux world that legitimately
| looks better than the big competitors. Not always, and not all
| the time; programs that are really focused on design are still
| a cut above, but I truly believe that KDE looks (and feels!)
| better than macOS
|
| I don't understand why there aren't more folks like us shouting
| it from the rooftops. It's almost bizarre how good it looks.
| jwrallie wrote:
| I'm curious about which distros are working well with Plasma,
| as I had some trouble with stability in the past. I have the
| feeling Plasma works better with rolling release.
| pimeys wrote:
| I've been running two distros with Plasma: Bazzite OS and
| CachyOS. Both very different, and stellar with Plasma.
|
| I use CachyOS in my ThinkPad and in my Framework Desktop,
| for work. A stellar OS, has great defaults, is very fast
| and prioritizes KDE although you can do other WMs too if
| you're adventurous.
| bikelang wrote:
| Bazzite has been so good to use it has me consisting
| dropping PopOS as my dev distro for Bluefin
| ufmace wrote:
| Fedora works well with it for me, no complaints. Though I
| haven't yet used it through a major version update.
| anjel wrote:
| Garuda deploys plasma with vanity
| pyrophane wrote:
| What's Vanity?
| Melonai wrote:
| Plasma is the desktop-mode interface for the Steam Deck
| SteamOS, which is the only way I use it. I'm usually a
| Gnome person, as I'm one of the people Gnome just "clicks"
| for, despite all its issues, but I've been really enjoying
| using the Steam Deck as a mini computer and Plasma has been
| quite stable and solid for that. Did some minor
| customizing, and no issues at all so far!
| pyrophane wrote:
| Yeah, Gnome consolidates feature changes into major
| releases every six months, so it aligns well with fixed
| release distros like Ubuntu and Fedora that have release
| cycles that are aligned with Gnome's.
|
| KDE drops a new point release with new features ~ every
| four months, and has a more flexible release schedule, so
| it is just to just get the changes when they are released.
|
| I'm currently running KDE on NixOS unstable which is great,
| but if I weren't doing that I'd still be on OpenSUSE
| Tumbleweed.
| kombine wrote:
| OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and Fedora are two solid distros I've
| been running for a few years now.
| klinstar wrote:
| The privacy angle is what stands out to me here. Most smart TV
| platforms are essentially surveillance devices with an
| entertainment UI bolted on. Having a fully open-source
| alternative that doesn't phone home with your viewing habits is a
| meaningful improvement, not just a technical curiosity. The CEC
| remote support is a nice practical touch too -- one of the main
| friction points with HTPC setups has always been input methods.
| edaus wrote:
| The most AI reply ever
| shevy-java wrote:
| Does anyone know whether Nate's donation-daemon is disabled on
| this device, by default? Because if it is, then this invites to a
| critical follow-up question: aka WHY is it disabled there, but
| not by default elsewhere for regular users of KDE. Nate, via his
| biased blog entries, constantly tries to reason how vital it is
| to pressure people (sorry; "voluntarily remind them that
| donations are acceptable for the KDE devs") into donating to KDE
| (e. g. his self-promo "what a success story I just did, we made
| millions!"), so if it is disabled on the TV device, it actually
| means that regular desktop users are a second-class citizen to
| him. KDE really took a strange turn ever since Nate took control
| of the project. Personally I much prefer the oldschool KDE
| approach; now suddenly we have "systemd is the only future" and
| other oddities way aside from the pester-Robin-Hood-daemon
| demanding more of your moneyz ...
| The_President wrote:
| For the sake of long term success of the KDE project - it needs
| a major public financial, secuirity, and bug audit. It would be
| worth seeing if the KDE project would use donation money to
| cover outside firms to audit their operations and code.
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| They have an Expenses breakdown in each year's fundraiser[0]
| page.
|
| https://kde.org/fundraisers/
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| They made 467,889 euros in donations in 2024. This is the
| desktop environment that is an incumbent to taking market share
| from Windows. Is your comment serious?
| freshnode wrote:
| Unpopular opinion, perhaps - isn't this just tech looking for a
| problem to solve?
|
| The fact that the apps I would actually care about having on real
| estate on my front room seem to be nowhere to be seen is kinda
| glaring from my perspective... I know there's a certain purism to
| having Firefox front and center... But really?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I'd argue that that's orthogonal; this is making the general UI
| work well on a TV, then apps get populated into that. And
| honestly I'll bet that for most uses Firefox working well _is_
| what you want, since a handful of shortcuts to open Firefox to
| assorted streaming services would do the trick quite nicely.
| dqv wrote:
| I immediately envisioned having my feed reader as a FireFox
| shortcut and being able to navigate to YouTube videos from
| that.
|
| Another thing is that I've found certain old movies can only
| be streamed from weird websites - as in
| https://weirdstreamingwebsite is the only licensed entity to
| have it. I could either buy a VHS (which is what we did) or
| stream it. But since a physical copy might not be available,
| the only option would be to use that weird website to stream
| it. There is no app!
| drnick1 wrote:
| Firefox, and airmouse, and an adblocker are the main tools to
| free yourself from commercial streaming services.
| mattcantstop wrote:
| This combined with a tv that had tactile buttons again would be
| nice! So tired of the buttonless TVs now, or the buttons that
| have no tactile feedback so you don't know what you are doing in
| the dark.
|
| Like no tactile controls in cars, this was also a mistake for TVs
| evolve2k wrote:
| > I just want to help, throw a task at me!
|
| > Great! We always need help. In order to find something that you
| find fun and rewarding to work on, a good first step is to find
| out which itch you have with Plasma Bigscreen, and how it can be
| scratched. What's nagging you? Now give us a shout-out, best via
| the Plasma mailing list. You can also make yourself known in the
| Matrix channel. There's plenty to do, tasks for every skill and
| level, and you'll find it's fun to work on and learn from each
| other.
|
| https://plasma-bigscreen.org/contributing
|
| 1. Open issues on Gitlab:
|
| https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-bigscreen/-/issues
|
| 2. Join the Plasma mailing list here:
|
| https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel
|
| 3. Join the Matrix channel and say you want a task here:
|
| https://matrix.to/#/%23plasma-bigscreen:kde.org
| zer0zzz wrote:
| This looks good
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| This is cool, I'm curious to try, are there any competing OSS
| projects in this space that I should compare?
| wao0uuno wrote:
| LibreELEC/Kodi
| IshKebab wrote:
| Why have they done the stupid LG thing and wasted half the screen
| on empty background? I don't understand it.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| How you're going to be able to use Firefox or thunderbird with a
| tv remote ?
|
| It's great that they work on a tv ui for kde but I feel like it's
| really not going to work well on anything but a monitor with
| mouse and keyboard.
| vermilingua wrote:
| Most modern TVs (not to mention SBCs you could just connect
| with HDMI) have bluetooth/USB for keyboard & mouse
| drnick1 wrote:
| You can use an airmouse remote for that.
| atoav wrote:
| If you have regular KDE I urge you to just shake your mouse
| vigorously for ca. a minute. The cursor has this mouse finding
| feature where the mouse cursor gets bigger if you shake it. It
| can get comically big, like fill the whole screen big.
|
| One of the best features I have ever seen.
| wao0uuno wrote:
| I discovered it yesterday by accident. Not the feature but the
| fact the cursor just keeps on growing and growing. Kinda funny
| but also possibly a bug.
| einr wrote:
| This feature is borrowed from macOS, but on macOS it doesn't
| grow indefinitely.
| xrd wrote:
| I can't for the life of me figure out if this is a way to put KDE
| on my TV by overwriting the existing OS, or if this is something
| to install on a computer which I then plug my TV into via HDMI.
|
| I'm not being lazy here but I have reviewed this site and
| outbound links. And, I have reviewed the threads there.
|
| I'm very interested in repurposing my LG Smart TV and have been
| hesitant about installing a software package on it.
|
| If I brick the TV I'm fearful my kids will burn me at the stake.
|
| I don't see a listed hardware matrix, but do see a link to enter
| into the matrix server and ask questions. I don't see packages or
| a repository to add.
|
| I think llms generally produce quite a bit of slop content but I
| think they could be used to explain open source projects a bit
| better. This seems like an opportunity.
| evolve2k wrote:
| I could totally wrong, but my assumption is that you'd get a
| small dedicated box (mini PC) that has an display
| port/hdmi/lightning port and usb ports and plug that into your
| TV like you would an Apple TV.
|
| A remote control with wifi would work pretty easily by being
| connected into usb port, just like a wireless mouse.
|
| Something like an ASUS NUC comes to mind for me but it's
| designed to work with anything that you can install Linux on.
| https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=asus+nuc&_trksid=p46248...
| xrd wrote:
| Ok. That makes sense.
|
| I wonder if you can then use Netflix and other streaming
| services? I have a Chromecast device and could probably just
| switch the HDMI to use that. I can use Netflix on my Linux
| laptop but I haven't tried Disney and I would very much doubt
| Apple+ would work on KDE.
| darkwater wrote:
| Since this is not going to be released any time soon, any
| suggestions on what could be used to be a TV UI for Jellyfin? It
| should just show that, nothing else. Currently I'm using a
| Nintendo Switch with Switchfin and it's pretty neat but sometimes
| even transcoded streams stutter or make the fan go brrrrr
| reedlaw wrote:
| Plasma Bigscreen has been around for 6 years:
| https://itsfoss.com/news/plasma-bigscreen-comeback/
| darkwater wrote:
| I was referring to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47283124
|
| Anyway, I will try it in its current status. I basically need
| a launcher for the desktop Jellyfin app and not much more
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I work in the refurb division of an e-waste recycling company.
| While I prefer XFCE in general, KDE works much better on
| touchscreens. I have a handful of old first gen Microsoft Surface
| Hubs sitting around. I wonder if this Bigscreen mode supports
| touch, if so it might be awesome on a 55" (or 84") touchscreen.
| ajot wrote:
| Of note: Plasma Bigscreen was sort of revived and rejuvenated
| last year by a Plasma Mobile dev
|
| https://espi.dev/posts/2025/07/plasma-bigscreen/
| jrm4 wrote:
| At the risk of whatever, I feel like there might be a "market"
| for something like the "OpenBox" version of this - or perhaps
| what I'm saying is even using something like Openbox to get the
| minimalist version of this thing.
|
| Seems to me a 10-foot interface almost by definition _doesn 't_
| need the complexity of a KDE; you need to launch apps from "big
| rectangles on the screen" instead of like a Start Menu(and
| probably configure those to be 10 foot friendly) -- and MAYBE a
| few widgets and that's it.
|
| I've always wondered why that doesn't seem to exist, and now
| probably with vibe coding may just work on it myself.
| ducktastic wrote:
| I'm totally with you on this and a great idea. Always used
| flux/openbox whenever I could on my own workstations, and the
| idea that it could be used for a big screen device would be
| great.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Joe's Window manager might be a better choice than Openbox
| (imo) if someone does want to work on it.
|
| Maybe FLTK/FLWM can be interesting as well.
| iririririr wrote:
| and after you launch the app, then what? are you rewriting
| chrome or firefox?
|
| regular kde is usable enough on my tv from the couch, just bump
| font size and 200% scaling. done.
|
| these ideas are reminiscent of a time people thought kiosk
| modes were a good idea.
|
| what one call complexity most people can being able to do
| anything at all.
| ritlo wrote:
| Build it on Retroarch and you don't even need X/Wayland. And
| the menu/launching functionality is done, you'd just be making
| a theme for it.
|
| Really if someone made a WebKit "core" and a Jellyfin client
| "core" (which, actually, you might get "for free" with the
| browser if you can tolerate web bloat on your platform) under
| libretro it'd be a pretty damn capable set-top-box UI. All the
| "cores" right now are games/emulators, but they don't have to
| be.
| kogasa240p wrote:
| Might use this when I finally set up my media server pc, I know
| Kodi is optimal but I do want to use that computer for other
| server related things.
| StevenNunez wrote:
| Please take my Samsung TV interface
| arikrahman wrote:
| So when they said Plasma TVs would be the next big thing, this is
| what they meant. Jolly good show.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I just scale my regular desktop to 133 or 150% when I plug my
| laptop to my video projector and use that old cordless
| keyboard/trackpad combo from microsoft or logitech (can't
| remember and can't verify right now, thise with a usb receptor) I
| bought 2 decades ago.
|
| I don't really think a specific TV like interface would make it
| more user friendly really. It is much faster to browse and select
| files than on any remote based interface I have ever used on
| dedicated devices (or video game consoles). Turns out we have
| never made any better device than a keyboard to type search words
| :-)
|
| I could use kdeconnect to control a lot of stuff like volume /
| play/pause / next buttons from my smartphone but I don't even do
| that as the keyboard+trackpad combo is always available next to
| me anyway.
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