alt Hacker NewsPlasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma
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> 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:
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.
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.
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.
Of note: Plasma Bigscreen was sort of revived and rejuvenated last year by a Plasma Mobile dev
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.
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.
So when they said Plasma TVs would be the next big thing, this is what they meant. Jolly good show.
What kind of "Remote" would one use to mimic say an Android TV box or normal cable company Set-Top experience?
Too bad can't access $CorpStreamingVideoService full-resolution on linux :(
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
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.
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
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?
If this can run AndroidTV apps (don't see why it couldn't), then it can be a hit.
"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.
but it will be hard to play DRM protected media, eg Netflix on a device like this, right?
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.
Please take my Samsung TV interface
KDE is the best DE out there.
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.
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.
Are there existing alternatives to this? I use KDE, but I have also heard Steam OS has something similar.
I'm really wondering about what is that ASIO4ALL uninstaller doing in there
Wow this is big, what's the best device/remote stack to use it with?
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.
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.
"Built on Modern Linux Technologies"
> D-bus
alright!
on a more serious note, should remove that incase that was put there by AI.
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
Why have they done the stupid LG thing and wasted half the screen on empty background? I don't understand it.
This is cool, I’m curious to try, are there any competing OSS projects in this space that I should compare?
This looks good
Now we only need a TV that doesn't send screenshots back to the vendor.
So... Steam TV Box confirmed?
[dead]
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?
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 ...
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.
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.