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?
this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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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.
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 https://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
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What does DE mean in this context?
Desktop environment
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Can't wait to switch to Desktop Mode on my SteamDeck to open Plasma BigScreen.
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?
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.
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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.
That only would launch them and probably won’t support remotes properly.
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.
Let's goooo!
(And let's support!!)
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! 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.
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
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.
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I found opensuse's default firewall rules were very restrictive and you needed to open a port.
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Looks nice! I'm getting it set up on an old Pi right now for a new media center in my basement.
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.
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Nice
Never seen this before, might have to try it on my TV PC. Do like the interface!
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