Hell yeah!
Are there any distros yet that come with it? I have a pi I've been using as an htpc and I'm interested in switching
this post was submitted on 15 May 2026
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I've been waiting for Plasma Bigscreen for quite a while for my and eventually my family's living room entertainment system.
Add a DVB receiver and you can just a normal, dumb screen and never have to deal with shitty "smart" TVs again.
Right now? Only buying Android TV because it's the only OS whixh I can manipulate (using ADB).
i wonder if I'll be possible to flash this on my nvidia shield when it's out
FYI this won't be out until June.
Ok, but why would you run Plasma on a HTPC?
Because my TV is a plasma
But fr, because its a htpc designed de. I've been looking forward to this because it'll be a convenient way to control it from the couch.
How useful is this in the grand scheme of things if the applications themselves don't have a 10ft UI? I guess you'd need to limit yourself and find apps specifically made to be shown on a TV.. within a repository that caters desktop apps. Blending TV's and desktops is hard...
I have a Linux HTPC on Mint where I have the Pegasus frontend with Jellyfin, VacuumTube, and a bunch of games. The main usability issue is the need to exit each app differently to get back to Pegasus. There’s no notion of using a home button to go back to the home screen and pause the current process, which is what I’d be hoping to get with Bigscreen. Otherwise, Pegasus is fine for launching apps with a remote, and Jellyfin and VacuumTube work fine with a remote as well.
Reintroduces, really. Iirc it was originally made for plasma 5 and and was broken by changes in Plasma 6. This is "we fixed the stuff we broke".
Yup, it disappeared from Debian repositories in 13/Trixie.
Ohhhh it's finally coming!
Looking forward to trying it.
I'm super pumped to finally have something better than Nvidia Sheild or Kodi
Yeah this has been on the books for ages. It's not being developed by KDE's core team and it wasn't making much progress for a while but I'm really happy yo see it come out.
Honestly, I want to like Kodi, but even this first screenshot looks much better than anything I've been able to muster together in Kodi.
Same here. Kodi's UI was nice back in the days when it was XBMC. These days we have different ideas on usability.
Controlling it with a controller is awful, I had to change a lot of settings and it still jumps to a different scene any time someone accidentally bumps the joystick when picking it up or forgets to use the dpad for 10s rewind
Yeah I feel the same way. I feel like Kodi, unfortunately, makes it harder to use my HTPC rather than easier
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Now how do I control this with a gamepad?
"Multiple Input Methods Navigate with your TV remote via CEC, a game controller, a keyboard and mouse, or even your phone via KDE Connect."
Should just work out of the box, I think
get a steam controller, old or new, they have touchpad(s)
No.
This is what I really want
How do streaming services like Disney, prime, Netflix, and hbo run on these? Is it possible?
I need something dead simple for my wife.
I set up Jellyfin and my wife and kids love it. We have no streaming services now.
Unsubscribe to all off them and sail the high seas
I should also add that I live in a third would country so all the streaming services are dirt cheap here.
I think YouTube premium is like $3 a month or something like that.
cries in hard drive prices
Install Kodi and pirate shows from those services.
Probably the same as on a Linux desktop now, the browser sites work fine but you won't get 4k or HDR.
Worth it in my books. Might be my eyes going bad, but I can't notice much difference beyond 720p
Either your eyes are bad or the files you've watched. There's an absolutely enormous difference between 720p and proper 4k with a decent bitrate. Also a decent display with good HDR can add a lot as well.
I blame it on my eyes. On the positive, I don't know what I'm missing.
With respect, if you cannot notice a difference between 720p and 4k on a 4k compatible screen, then you do indeed have something wrong with your eyes.
I sold TVs when 1080p was coming out and there were so many “your eyes can only see the difference between 720p and 1080p if the screen is X big or you’re X close to it” and it was baffling. How could people have such bad eyes? Then I hit 30, 40, and… fuckin HUGE DIFFERENCE STILL. A 16” screen 10m from me? 1080p is going to look FAR better than 720p, much less 4k.
No shade to folks with poor eyesight, but tons of shade to anyone saying there not a difference when they can see it, to justify their purchasing choices (like huge amount of people arguing for 30FPS during the XBone/PS4 gen)
My 60" TV is so far away from the couch that my Steam Deck's screen in my hands is the same perceived size. Depending on what you're watching, the difference between 1080P and 4k isn't that noticeable at that distance. What really makes a difference is HDR. Also note that lower-res content is often way more compressed, which makes it much more noticeable.
You bring up another great point: higher rez with shitty compression or artifacting looks wayyy shittier than lower rez with good compression!
Quick edit: unfortunately for most any steaming service, you get shitty compression AND low rez through a browser D:
It’s not just resolution and colorspace. The providers also drop the ~~nitrate~~ *bitrate significantly. Which, in my opinion, is way more noticeable and jarring.
I was really confused for a moment over why monitors would use nitrate and how it could affect the experience. Then I realized you meant bitrate lol
Man, I’ve really got to get better at proofing my comments before hitting submit, on mobile especially.
How’s HDMI-CEC support in Linux? I remember that being a sticking point last time I considered building an HTPC
Doesn’t work. Not a Linux issue. No graphics card or motherboard maker connects the hardware correctly to support CEC on PCs. It’s an industry-wide practice.
There is the pulse eight injector which together with software can inject CEC with a USB connection with the caveat it can’t turn your computer on and it’s a hacky and imperfect solution for tinkerers rather than production ready equipment. Also it’s only HDMI 2.0 not 2.1.
How’s HDMI-CEC support in Linux?
Pulled directly from KDE Plasma’s Bigscreen website.
Multiple Input Methods
Navigate with your TV remote via CEC, a game controller, a keyboard and mouse, or even your phone via KDE Connect.
KDE Connect has literally only every once worked for me, via WiFi only.
I don't understand why they haven't officially added the Bluetooth support into it by now.
I searched for what HDMI-CEC but it’s not very clear to me. Does it mean that, say, if I have an HTPC, and if I run Kodi, I can control it with a regular TV remote? Should this thing be on a TV too? Would appreciate someone with the supported devices to comment how it works and how you use it.
It means that multiple devices which are connected to the same TV can all control each other.
For example, say you have a streaming device (e.g. Amazon Fire Stick) and an audio receiver both hooked up to the same TV on different HDMI ports. With CEC, you could use the volume buttons on the streaming device’s remote to control the volume on the audio receiver. You could also use the power button on the TV remote to turn all three devices on/off at the same time.
I use LibreElec which is a Linux distro of sorts. It has CEC that works for me
Last time I used it, it felt laggy to menu through.
Nice. Definitely something to check out when I build my next HTPC.
This plus a Flirc USB would be amazing. I'm going to give it a go.
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