Comment on KDE Plasma Bigscreen (Android TV alternative) is back from dead
WhatGodIsMadeOf@feddit.org 2 days ago
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?
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.
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/
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…?
What does DE mean in this context?
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.
Desktop environment
lilith267@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
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
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I wonder if you could eventually get it built into Bazzite
josefo@leminal.space 1 day ago
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.