Lately, some KDE projects have seen a revival, like Karton (the native virtual machine manager for KDE) and the improved ISO Image Writer. Now, another abandoned KDE project, Plasma Bigscreen, is looking to return from the dead after long-time Plasma Mobile contributor Devin decided to spend a week overhauling the thing.

If you have not heard of it, Plasma Bigscreen is a Plasma shell for televisions, with original support for the now-defunct Mycroft AI assistant. It used to provide a simple launcher for apps and custom "Mycroft Skills" before development stalled, causing most distributions to drop it.

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[–] 3 points 1 year ago

getting TV remotes to work over HDMI CEC is still untested

Ah, bummer, but I'm glad a project like this exists and is getting some new life breathed into it. Can't say I'm a huge fan of the toolbar at the top but I'm sure ricing will be fun on a platform like this.

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  • 33 comments in c/opensource@lemmy.ml view that post
    [–] 59 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Not currently available to download according to the official page:

    "As of right now, Plasma Bigscreen isn't available for public use yet. This is due to not being developed for so long. The project has been revived, but it might take a while until it becomes stable and is available for public use."

    That said, if this could run on top of the standard linux OS on my MiniPC (like Steam Big Picture), then I'd give it a go!

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Arch (and derivative) systems can install it through the AUR, but I do not know any distribution that offers it through their normal distribution channels (packages sources) already.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Arch (and derivative) systems can install it through the AUR

    Once installed, does it run as an application? I'm using Aurora, but it has DistroBox, and I'm almost certain that I'm able to get Arch programs installed through it.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (1 child)

    It is a DE, like regular KDE, GNOME etc. At your OS's login shell, you should be able to select it once installed. If it is the only desktop environment on that system, it will not even be needed to get selected as the appropriate session gets started when you login.

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  • [–] 60 points 1 year ago

    Never heard of this. So glad there is an alternative to android TV and Roku. Going to give it a shot.

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  • [–] 28 points 1 year ago*

    Excellent. The umbrella of KDE is home to a bunch of my favorite applications. Kdenlive, Krita, Digikam. I've been hotly anticipating the day I get a phone running Plasma Mobile

    This may be better eventually than Plasma Mobile for what I imagined as an ideal gaming frontend that isn't just Steam Big Picture

    Maybe someday Waydroid and Android Translation Layer will make Linux as a HTPC+gaming great

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago

    itll be faster than android tv, no gplaysvc taking all resources

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    That's exciting. It looks very clean, but until it has the tv remote support aspect I think it'll wait

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Gotta check if my GPU even supports CEC.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    and some games like SuperTuxKart are playable

    shows a screenshot of SuperTux, an entirely different game

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I just hope for a TV that is rootable where I can install whatever ROM I want, I just want to own my TV. KDE keeps making our future bright

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    I'm incredibly hyped for this!

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    It would be nice if they would overcome the 720p/1080p limitation imposed by some stream services https://androidpcreview.com/netflix-hd-android-tv-box/

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Alternative option for you. Drop streaming and set up Stremio with torrentio . Get a good vpn subscription as well. Highly recommend it.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/StremioAddons/s/zxlUZTN0qu

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Does anyone know if there are any plans to port this to raspberry pi?

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  • [–] [S] 10 points 1 year ago*

    Right now it's not packaged up for easy use but KDE has supported Raspberry Pi's for ages so I wouldn't be surprised if you ran Plasma desktop, it'd be simple to build and install. I'd wait until they got it back onto the KDE release cadence with everything else though for simplicity

    For anyone who wants to test this out, you can do as Devin did by installing Plasma Bigscreen on a Raspberry Pi using postmarketOS, though you would have to compile it yourself or pull from the nightly repos to get the latest changes.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago*

    I had lots of problems with the previous version when turning the TV off/on while it's running, like losing keyboard access (no focus) until you use the mouse at least once and it updating the display settings every time. Hope it's getting better now.

    TBH the keyboard focus issue is happening on most Login Managers and DEs, so it's not really their fault. I will try it out some time, until then I keep using my SteamOS install.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Nice! I wanted to use this, but my env already had plasma 6, I'd like to replace the TV os

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Tried this 6-9 months ago and it was a shambles that I could hardly get working.

    The main issue (once it was working) was program (Stremio) not supporting keyboard only options.

    I also wanted to run android apps full screen (like a dog nvidia shield) but it was chaos.

    I thought it was abandoned.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    That does not look better than project ivy launcher imho.

    From the 100 reasons to choose this over android tv, subjective thing like "better UI" is not one.

    Does it support SmartTube? Jellyfin? Refresh rate and resolution changing based on signal? Bitstream? Codecs? Exo player is a great default player used by many apps, what's this ones alternative?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    Is mostly a interface for linux distros, so AndroidTV apps won't work.

    Jellyfin Media Player (desktop app) have a TV UI, which kinda woks, on the article mentions an YouTube app called VacuumTube.

    Is more an alternative for DIY home theater PC (like Kodi) than AndroidTV

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yeah, I understood, but the OP made it sound like something to replace Android TV.

    I wish the revive does well and we'll have a proper alternative, but the main thing they have to beat is what something like Android TV on Shield provides - otherwise it'll just be a thing to tinker with, not a replacement.

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  • I'm curious why you'd choose this over kodi or something like bazzite. What specifically are the advantages?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    So judging by the comments this is something you would install as a DE on a Linux distro, perhaps on a miniPC, not something running on the SmartTV itself?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    So sexy. KDE ate as usual

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  • 7 comments in c/technology@lemmy.zip view that post
    [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    I want it to be run as a desktop environment. Is that possible? I already have laptop connected to tv with hdmi. I just use it like a normal computer. But I don't have any applications that can work well with that setup with TV like UI.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    What applications are you using?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    I am just using Firefox to open web sites for most things. For games I open them directly. And I have kdeconnect to control it from my phone.

    Ideally I'd love a launcher that just stays on there forever, with some virtual desktop options where I can open different apps. If it can support game controller to choose apps along side kdeconnect it'd be the best.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Theres usually at least some support for connecting game console controllers. That might be an option alongside kdeconnect for the games. I think ps4/xbox one and later both work out of the box over bluetooth. Not sure how it would work in firefox though.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Game controller works fine in the computer. It's the applications that need to support it. Problem is finding normal applications (not games) support it. I could map the controller to keyboard keys, but it'd be nice to have it work directly.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    With it being virtually impossible not to buy a "smart" TV, giving people the option to have connected software that doesn't phone home is a great idea. I wish the average person was more aware of these types of options.

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  • Hopefully this will work with Google TV too since it's essentially just an Android TV rebrand for Chromecast. Some of them have decent hardware though, but are held back by the all of the Google bloat. Even using apps that allow adb on Google TVs you can't fully remove it all without soft-bricking the TV.

    I've tried setting Kodi up on a few TVs that I've fixed, then put them on a VLAN so they couldn't go online, but could still access my NAS. And even with some having hardware support for AV1, anything over 4-5Mbps or so would cause them to drop frames and lag out. The HEVC support was a little better and will usually do 10-20Mbps+ before running into issues, which is plenty for most YarTube content. So I did a little more digging and noticed that the CPU was sitting at a constant 30%+ usage just doing background bloatware bullshit. So if we had a better UI option, it would open up a lot of cheaper $200-300 4K Google TVs that can stream from a NAS or Jellyfin/Plex server without needing to transcode. Since they have hardware support for basically everything.

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  • 4 comments in c/opensource@programming.dev view that post
    [–] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I might fire this up to test it out

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Its sadly not public yet as far as I heard, but I'm sure Lemmy will let us know when it is ☺️

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  • 4 comments in c/opensource@jlai.lu view that post
    [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Ça fait partie de mes projets à terme

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago

    Je vaes pouvoir retirer AndroidTV de mon projecteur u.u

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago
    [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Ooh, je découvre un nouveau truc qui me plaît beaucoup !

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