With the recent GN video I’d been wondering about turning an old mini PC from eBay into a little Linux TV box for streaming. I’d need access to Android apps (I guess through Waydroid).
After a brief look, it seems that the two options are some form of LibreElec system running Kodi or Arch running Plasma Big Screen. Any thoughts / advice? And if I went for Big Screen, does anyone know of any distros that ship with it or will I have to spin it up myself on Arch?
I have two TVs running completely off arch. One is a Lenovo Tiny PC, the other is a home server I built.
The frontend for both is just the normal arch desktop, running cinnamon with just some visual customizations. Each one has autologin, and on boot they open to the desktop with icons for Plex and a web browser that has shortcuts to all our streaming services on its home page. I also had Kodi running on them, which is handy because you can boot into it, but everything I was using it for Plex did better. I don’t bother with a remote, I just use a Bluetooth mouse.
The little PC in my bedroom is basically just a frontend. The bigger system in my living room is a frontend but also runs a Plex server, some servarr apps, plus a bunch of unrelated services. My wife is not super tech-savvy but it’s intuitive enough for her to figure out the interface.
My biggest friction point is my one streaming sports app that won’t save my login longer than 7 days, so I have to keep logging in to it but I don’t have a keyboard attached. I use a virtual keyboard as a workaround but it takes forever to peck out my login that way, and the app will log me out in the middle of a game if my login expires. More annoying than anything.
I’m not familiar with Waydroid or Big Screen, and I don’t use either of these systems for gaming, so I don’t have any advice there.
Obviously not the most secure method in the world, but would it be worth putting that password in a text file so you can just copy it with a mouse click instead of grappling with the virtual keyboard? Or a one-line script that just sends the string to your clipboard?
ETA: Hopefully that password is unique to that app account to minimize the threat of compromise.