KDE Plasma Bigscreen (Android TV alternative) is back from dead
(www.neowin.net)
from Ugurcan@lemmy.world to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 15 Jul 18:38
https://lemmy.world/post/33014404
from Ugurcan@lemmy.world to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 15 Jul 18:38
https://lemmy.world/post/33014404
Not exactly self-hosted but I know many jellyfinners here would cherish this as well.
threaded - newest
That’s looks much better.
I tried the older version for my htpc and didn’t like it.
I would love to see this keep improving.
Is this basically a DE? Could you run steam and full on gaming PC off this?
Can one PC run this for TV while also running DE for desktop?
Been seeking such solutions it seems like I am dreaming too hard lol
Is just another DE which you can choose when logging in
ok, but it would be wonderful if you could have this run on the TV, while the main screen runs normal plasma.
speaking of that, it’s probably doable with setting up multiseat, probably in systemd logind
edit: @sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
let me know if this way you got a notification
Yeah, wanted to suggest multi seat, but never played with it myself, so no clue how both sessions interact
My understanding is you’d have a completely seperate set of peripherals for each seat, so that might be an extremely viable solution
Baeically its a somewhat stripped down version of plasma ment to be used with a controller or remote, but it is only a DE, so applications that arent controller friendly are going to stay that way.
Setting steam to launch big picture by default tho would basically turn any powerful pc you have into a steam console (steam big picture) with an extra home screen (plasma bigscreen) that shows all your other applications
I wonder if you could eventually get it built into Bazzite
The thing is without this, if you somehow exit steam, you are toast and need to plug a keyboard or access via ssh. Having a DE with controller support like this would indeed rock, as I stop depending on steam for launching things.
What does DE mean in this context?
Desktop environment
It’s a Linux concept. Basically, imagine you could have a Windows 11 PC with the Windows XP GUI or with the macOS GUI. In Linux, these kinds of different GUIs are just desktop environments, which you can install as you see fit.
Conversely, you can also have an OS without a desktop environment, which is basically what’s used on Linux server PCs.
Or is it a “mode” of KDE? Like can you use a distro of KDE and then put it into Bigscreen mode?
It’s using plasma-nano session, which is a minimal Plasma session, and adding a launcher and settings app from what I can see.
You can run it in a regular window if you install the dependencies and use kde-builder to compile it and run. See the Dev docs at invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-bigscreen/
If you do decide to install all the kde-builder stuff, I’d suggest you use a distrobox container to make it easy to remove the many, many packages that it will install in order to set up the build environment
It’s not that. Or at least you have to reboot into it.
…or can you just load a desktop environment without rebooting… Keeping your apps open…?
It’s an alternative shell for Plasma, so theoretically you should be able to do anything in it that you can do in Plasma.
On my Arch box it installed a minimal set of Plasma utilities to support it, which means my setup is still very limited (and I can’t turn off screen lock!), but I haven’t tried if it would change if offered a full Plasma install.
I can most certainly launch Steam, Kodi, Jellyfin etc.
Can’t wait to switch to Desktop Mode on my SteamDeck to open Plasma BigScreen.
Looks promising. Does remote controllers work with it?
I expect so.
KDE Connect also works great as a remote control for many things, presumably including this.
I’m wondering what I’ve done wrong with KDE Connect as I could never get it working on any device across 3 different smartphones
Sadly the distributions I tried did not open the required port(s) on the built-in firewall (Bazzite and CachyOS, for two).
I would suggest to disable any firewall and check if you can pair.
You are probably correct that the firewall is the culprit. Good suggestion.
I realize disabling the firewall for testing is OK, but I recommend looking up what it takes to open the ports or app in the firewall instead. I've spent my whole career running into and fixing instances where techs disabled firewalls for "testing" and never re-enabled them.
You mean they didn’t just turn off the firewall on all client machines and rely entirely on a single firewall at the network gateway? Because that’s what I’ve seen way too much of…
I found opensuse’s default firewall rules were very restrictive and you needed to open a port.
HDMI-CEC seems to be currently unsupported. So you won’t be able to use your TV’s remote yet.
The article actually stated that the featured is untested.
now, that sounds more interesting than just “unsupported”!
Being Linux, if you were really motivated, you could probably write a shim service that converted CEC to basic input that it does support, or someone out there probably already has.
Let’s goooo!
(And let’s support!!)
Never seen this before, might have to try it on my TV PC. Do like the interface!
I tried it like a year ago, and there were really a lot of things I dislike. Let’s see how it goes. Would be nice, because I still don’t have a good solution for this.
I ended up with a kde desktop set up that was good.
I used a mini handheld keyboard by Rii, it had a touch pad. There are many different styles of it. But with the customization kde has, I got a pretty fluent set up. It was a full desktop but almost more like android in terms of usage.
It is getting a complete makeover
Looks nice! I'm getting it set up on an old Pi right now for a new media center in my basement.
Nice! The revival is further along than I thought. Can’t wait to put it on my Steam Deck. And maybe my desktop PC will move into the living room in the near future. Would be the perfect timing.
Wow this looks to be really promising!! I would LOVE to get rid of my current Nvidia sheild Android TV setup, as that contain the mast part of Google I’m forced to use.
Nice
Glad to see it being picked back up. I tried it previously and I really didn't like it. It felt half baked. The new version looks like a substantial improvement. Now if only every streaming app didn't lock their services behind DRM and mobile apps.
Couldn’t you get around this by making the “apps” in bigscreen be browser shortcuts to their respective streaming website?
That only would launch them and probably won’t support remotes properly.
Many streaming service websites limit browser streaming to 720p.
Or just outright don’t allow it at all on Linux as if that does anything whatsoever.
Really? I’m on a Linux desktop and I had not noticed. Though I steam from Netflix on it very very rarely.
With Netflix in a browser, you can bring up your streaming stats in the browser window as you’re watching something by pressing Ctrl + Shift+ Alt + D. It’ll give you several bits of information as an overlay, including what resolution the video is playing at. Next time you stream from them, give it a shot and see if you get anything above 720p. I know I never have and if you search online, you’ll find others with the same experience. In fact, I think Netflix might actually have this on a FAQ page somewhere…
Found it! help.netflix.com/en/node/30081
Scroll down to the OS selection and you can see what resolutions are supported by which browsers on Linux. Turns out Opera will give you 1080p for some reason, but the rest are capped at 720p.
I wonder if making another browser spoof being Opera would work too.
I suspect it probably would. Though I haven’t looked too deeply into it myself, I’ve heard of browser extensions you can get to force 1080p from Netflix, so maybe that’s what they’re doing.
Whats stopping spoof to Android? Possible workaround?
As others have mentioned, the websites tend to be limited both by resolution and functionality.
My TV supports CEC(most do these days) which will pass the remote input onto the devices connected to it, like a computer. Which means with Plasma Big Picture I can navigate with my remote, and any app that supports navigation with simple arrow key input would work great.
Unfortunately, the streaming websites, last time I tried, absolutely suck at that and assume you are navigating with a mouse.
Does it have Stremio and an equivalent to YouTube ReVanced/SmartTubeNext? If so, I’m sold. I’m tired of the slow clunky interface on my Android-based TV. Paid nearly $2K for this fucker and they couldn’t even be bothered to give it a CPU with more than 2 cores, nor more than 8GB of storage space. Like a cheap Chinese Android phone from 2014.
Stremio Youtube
You can use pretty much anything you can with desktop Linux, however some apps may not work with a controller
Does it support Dolby Vision?
Because if not, I’m not sure how it’s going to compete with Android TV devices.
Are you sure that Dolby Vision is a main selling point of Android TVs?
You’re absolutely right, that’s just me not wanting it for Jellyfin on those grounds.
For mainstream users, I would assume that Linux being unable to run streaming services at full quality would discount it as a serious contender as well.
Most people I know haven’t even bothered to buy a new TV since Dolby Vision was created. A fair number still have 1080 sets.
While some like you may certainly demand it and it would be a good idea, I think it’s a fair description to help people understand the goal is an android TV like experience, and a lot of people are oblivious to a lot of the details of picture quality.
Just a bit over the top for such an overly dismissive statement, versus saying something like “does it support Dolby vision? I won’t be interested until it does”
Dolby Vision is not th catch. The catch is it will never work with major streaming platforms.
Yeah, it’s just what would work for me once I cancel Netflix Premium Plus with Reduced Adverts.
Unlikely, Dolby tech support requires that the license for Vision or Atmos etc has been bought for that particular machine. Never seen a media player where the end user can buy the license separately.
edit: Also those Android boxes only support DV Profile 5, which is DV used for streaming, If you want to play a UHD BluRay rip in mkv format in the highest quality DV profile, Profile 7 with Full Enhancement Layers, you need to find a Oppo 203 or 205 or one of the clones. Those are basically the only players that can play UHD BD mkv with DV Profile 7 FEL.
MS do sell Atmos (and DTS:X) support as an individually licensed thing, threough Dolby Access and DTS Sound Unbound on their store.
I do wonder how it could work in Linux, as well as getting things like commercial streaming services in 4K.
Presumably some sort of black box hardware would be needed (for the super top secret Widevine L1 shit), the manufacturer of that can pay the Dolby fees, and then just some basic open source code to call the hardware features.
Lol idek what Dolby vision is. Don’t they do sound?
It’s basically HDR (the 10 bit display kind, not the Half Life 2 kind), but with more metadata.
What I find is that if you have a Dolby Vision capable TV, it will be already calibrated to something that looks good, rather than you having to fuck around telling it how bright “paper” is or some shit.
HDR displays are surprisingly tricky, even without Dolby Vision or HDR10+. Especially if you’re mixing SDR and HDR content on a display. I tried it a few years ago on Windows and it was flat out awful. I think they’ve fixed a lot of it up now with Win 11, but even they took their damn time over it.
Thanks!
I haven’t purchased a new tv in years. My current monitor has HDR but idt i have it turned on because it just made everything look washed out and i don’t care enough to fiddle with all the settings when SDR looks fine to me.
A lot of monitors have particularly bad HDR, the max brightness being so low you might as well not bother. And as you’ve found out some games are really washed out for some reason. Like to the point where the game is almost entirely grey.
Worse, some games actually detect the capability in the monitor and turn it back on, and for that reason I wasn’t able to play Nex Machina on PC.
mpv supports Dolby vision (along with the Jellyfin clients that depend on it), but if you mean with streaming services, that’s unlikely to happen due to DRM.
This definitely looks like a project to follow
I kinda want to ask how well does firefox work? I kinda want to try using amazon prime one firefox with ublock origen (yes I know jelly fin and plex plus other tools exist) just curious
When I’ve used Prime Video before it worked flawlessly in Firefox with ublock, but that was on a laptop
Try Stremio and you can skip all that
HALLELUJAH!!! I was wondering what was going on with this project. I have so many old laptops waiting around just to be converted for Plasma Bigscreen so I can get rid of my android TV boxes that run like garbage
For real. My nvidia shield (the tube version), has been struggling with 4k HDR playback lately. It needs frequent reboots. I later come to learn that the device is 32 bit, yet it’s one of the most competitive devices in the space? Silly.
Fun horror story I learned recently, so are many, many, many of the things that share their internals, commonly, tablets. good luck figuring out whether this specific 4gb ram tablet has 64 bit, aka the majority of em either dont. Some are even using 64 bit processor with 32bit android build, so even if the processor cna handle it, no 64bit applications for you
can you
sudo rm -rf / --no-preserve-rooton it?Finally, an OS worthy of my “alternatively sourced” content library!