

I’ve tried a couple of setups including LibreELEC on a Raspberry Pi and self-compiled Plasma Bigscreen on x86, but my current and favourite setup is just stock Plasma with some configuration.
- First, get yourself a cheap “air mouse” remote. I have a WeChip brand one, works like a remote control crossed with a Wiimote, with a little keyboard on the back. There’s a handful of different brands, a quick search on Amazon will show a variety of different types. Having a regular wireless keyboard + mouse (like those cheap Logitech ones) is helpful if you want to do more complicated things than watch media.
- Starting with a stock Plasma desktop, I turn up the desktop icon size and make the bar taller, so it’s easier to click on things accurately. There’s also an alternative launcher menu in Plasma that goes fullscreen (instead of the start menu-style default).
- Next I make desktop shortcuts for the main apps/services I use. For Jellyfin I make a shortcut to the client, for commercial streaming services I make URL shortcuts that open in the default browser. I also like to set the desktop wallpaper to a solid colour.
- In Plasma’s system settings, make a window rule for the default browser to make it open in fullscreen. If you need, you can do the same for other programs (my Jellyfin client has its own setting, so this isn’t needed).
I use an x86 machine for this to avoid having to deal with getting widevine working for browser streaming. I use Librewolf as my browser and it works well. I know with some commercial streaming services there are video quality restrictions when watching through a browser on Linux, but that can’t be avoided without using a locked-down platform anyway. These days I’m mostly using Jellyfin and it works great.
I used to really want the “polished” HTPC UI, but over time (and after yet another botched Ubuntu version upgrade), I realised that this setup gets you 90% there with way less hassle, and the last 10% is just aesthetics. Using a common, well-supported desktop environment makes troubleshooting a lot easier too.
I’ve used Plasma Bigscreen a bit, so I have some thoughts on this.
First, if you don’t care about 4K streaming, you can have a perfectly good experience using commercial streaming services through a browser (on x64, at least). I set up Firefox to open fullscreen by default, then created a bunch of .desktop files as shortcuts to each streaming service I used, all opening in their own separate tab containers. That allowed my non-technical partner to open (for example) the Netflix “app” by clicking the desktop icon, which opens to the Netflix homepage full-screen, logged in and ready to go. The few times I’ve had to use Netflix via a smart TV or Android native app, it has been a worse experience than my in-browser bodge job - same has gone for Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, and even Spotify. What Plasma Bigscreen brings to the table is laying out those desktop shortcuts in a way more familiar to smart TV users - you can create categories so all the streaming shortcuts show up in the same row together, and customise their icons & backgrounds. I don’t really need it for myself, but when anyone else tries to use my TV, the familiar structure of the interface makes it easier. It’s a small thing, but it’s nice.
Second, you can do a lot more things than just stream video when you have a computer hooked up to a TV. Games are an obvious choice since you can use a controller to navigate Bigscreen, then jump straight into a game. Steam (especially in big picture mode) is the obvious one, but I have also found that Retroarch is seamless under Plasma Bigscreen, and with a knockoff air mouse remote you can have a good time even with games found in distro repos like Simon Tatham’s Portable Puzzle Collection, or the Space Cadet Pinball demo. Browser games are similary straightforward, and you can have direct shortcuts to them using the same trick I described for the streaming services.
The last thing I want to point out is that Bigscreen is just another desktop environment - you can install it alongside regular old Plasma (or GNOME, or whatever) and switch between them by logging out and selecting the one you want. Having a computer that’s hooked up to a large display and can give you a choice of interfaces suited to both TV and desktop use is more powerful than either option alone.