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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
> 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).
nsxwolf [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Fire up Claude Code, everyone! Let’s help them out!
accurrent [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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.
olivierestsage [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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.
AnonHP [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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.
dddgghhbbfblk [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
There’s a reason GNOME is the default for most of the major distributions.
simonask [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Just did recently. I remembered KDE as flexible but cluttered. It’s still flexible, but they really cleaned up nice!
brendyn [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Try going in to edit mode you'll freak out if you not prepared
cromka [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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...
fxde [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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.
F3nd0 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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.
jasonjayr [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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?
djfergus [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
you can assign a shortcut to do just that?
cromka [3 hidden]5 mins ago
OK, do me a favor and switch over to Gnome and try there. You'll see what I am talking about.
bee_rider [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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!
rjh29 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Does Gnome have Desktop icons again by default? Because if not then no, it's not fine for people moving from Windows or Mac.
pseudalopex [3 hidden]5 mins ago
> 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?
EnPissant [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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.
DiJu519 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
What kind of "Remote" would one use to mimic say an Android TV box or normal cable company Set-Top experience?
drnick1 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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.
JoshTriplett [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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.
lynndotpy [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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.
accurrent [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I use kde connect with my android for my htpc. Works nicely enough on stoxk kde.
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?
hapticmonkey [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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.
J_tt [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I’ve just moved from Kodi on a Linux box to Jellyfin and Infuse on an Apple TV, so far fantastic experience
s0rce [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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.
brcmthrowaway [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Claude ?
godelski [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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
cromka [3 hidden]5 mins ago
If this can run AndroidTV apps (don't see why it couldn't), then it can be a hit.
drnick1 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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.
whateverboat [3 hidden]5 mins ago
KDE is the best DE out there.
9dc [3 hidden]5 mins ago
but it will be hard to play DRM protected media, eg Netflix on a device like this, right?
trueismywork [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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.
Weird, why just on opera? It uses the same engine (chromium) as many other browsers.
h4ch1 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Is that through a dedicated Netflix profile or is there a way to enable DRM per site?
kingo55 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Are there existing alternatives to this? I use KDE, but I have also heard Steam OS has something similar.
pixelmelt [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Wow this is big, what's the best device/remote stack to use it with?
drnick1 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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.
cromka [3 hidden]5 mins ago
So... Steam TV Box confirmed?
amelius [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Now we only need a TV that doesn't send screenshots back to the vendor.
drnick1 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
This is easy, don't connect your TV to the Internet and use it as a monitor for a mini PC running Plasma Bigscreen.
functionmouse [3 hidden]5 mins ago
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.
HN.zip
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).
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.
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...
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.
Linux has a DE like GNOME. How many DEs like GNOME does it need?
Other than that I don't have too many complaints.
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?
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.
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
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
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.