What kind of "Remote" would one use to mimic say an Android TV box or normal cable company Set-Top experience?
Look up "USB RF remote" on eBay. There are two common ones you'll see everywhere. I have one for my Kodi system.
Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma
131–140 of 247 posts
Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 d…
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…
> 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.
Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma
#133If this can run AndroidTV apps (don't see why it couldn't), then it can be a hit.
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.
VacuumTube is fantastic
Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma
#134Big 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.
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…
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.
Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Dude, default plasma breeze theme, remove rounded corners, you have the windows 10 interface. What else do you want?
> 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.
Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma
#136If 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.
Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma
#137KDE 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.
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.
Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma
#138Big 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.
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-determin…
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.
Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma
#139Just 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.
> 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…
Also Kodis interface is terrible. I couldn't make a more convoluted and hard to navigate interface for TVs even if I tried.
Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
OK, do me a favor and switch over to Gnome and try there. You'll see what I am talking about.
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.