Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma • Hacker News Board

Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma

#51

Post by accurrent » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:30 AM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #35

sho_hn wrote: post #18

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.

[flagged]

Im an oss maintainer and recently the slop Ive had to deal with is excruciating. Theres nothing wrong with using AI for code, but generating 10prs that are all broken cause you have no idea what youre doing and hoping to get into GSoC is nonsense.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma

#52

Post by WD-42 » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:35 AM UTC

dddgghhbbfblk wrote: post #43

olivierestsage wrote: post #7

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.

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…

There’s a reason GNOME is the default for most of the major distributions.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma

#53

Post by godelski » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:35 AM UTC

SahAssar wrote: post #15

haunter wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get 1080p on Linux with Opera https://help.netflix.com/en/node/30081

Weird, why just on opera? It uses the same engine (chromium) as many other browsers.

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.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma

#54

Post by tapoxi » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:48 AM UTC

cromka wrote: post #16

olivierestsage wrote: post #7

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.

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…

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.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma

#55

Post by drnick1 » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:50 AM UTC

sho_hn wrote: post #18

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.

> 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).

Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma

#56

Post by drnick1 » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:55 AM UTC

DiJu519 wrote: post #2

What kind of "Remote" would one use to mimic say an Android TV box or normal cable company Set-Top experience?

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.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma

#57

Post by brendyn » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:56 AM UTC

simonask wrote: post #14

olivierestsage wrote: post #7

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.

Just did recently. I remembered KDE as flexible but cluttered. It’s still flexible, but they really cleaned up nice!

Try going in to edit mode you'll freak out if you not prepared

Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma

#58

Post by drnick1 » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:59 AM UTC

cromka wrote: post #12

If 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.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma

#59

Post by fxde » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 2:59 AM UTC

cromka wrote: post #16

olivierestsage wrote: post #7

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.

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…

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.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma

#60

Post by drnick1 » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 3:03 AM UTC

pixelmelt wrote: post #19

Wow this is big, what's the best device/remote stack to use it with?

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.