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Comment by safety1st | Hacker News Reader

Frankly it's disappointing that most of the comments on HN so far have been focused on the "marketing" and the website. The FAQ states that this project is still in very early stages and not yet intended for use as a daily driver. So if you actually read the website, it's clear why it's not consumer grade. I would much rather they focus on developing than marketing at this stage.

The basic thing going on here is simply that the KDE guys are working on a 10' experience and that's great, there is no good 10' experience today on Linux. Unless you count Steam Big Picture mode I guess? But a desktop environment which knows what to do about 10' would be really exciting.

Edit: for anyone who's interested, this appears to be the repo for the Bigscreen project: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-bigscreen/activity

The distro images on the website may be out of date.

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The splash screen makes it look like this is something you can simply install on a television of your choice.

It is perfectly reasonable to criticise the marketing when it gets in the way of the message. Having to find and read the FAQ to discover that it is basically just a prototype desktop environment for existing distros is a bit silly.

I will admit that at first glance I thought this was a firmware hack for TVs, and I immediately started digging around the site to try to find a list of compatible TVs...

Once I found out what it was, it was still quite cool and I am curious to follow development, but I agree the site design/layout/copy is confusing at best, misleading at worst.

> I would much rather they focus on developing than marketing at this stage.

Totally reasonable to feel this way, but personally I think naming is so important that it transcends any technical merit a project might have.

For my own projects, I never write a single line of code until I come up with a name I truly love. Some times it takes weeks, but then the project has an identity which keeps me motivated over the long term and actually inspires my technical choices of what to build.

Compare to the “Yet Another” naming scheme which (to me) feels like a preemptive apology for a project’s mere existence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yet_another

> Frankly it's disappointing that most of the comments on HN so far have been focused on the "marketing" and the website.

Or it's a strong signal toward the creators that their clever idea for naming was only clever in their heads and nowhere else?

I too got confused and was wondering "is this a project to revive old plasma TVs somehow?".

The marketing screenshots aren't too attractive honestly. It seriously seems to be lacking in consistent margins and padding. Look at the menu bar for example-- those icons are far too large for the space they fill. They look super cramped.

This is, somehow, typical in most Linux software I've used. They just don't care. :/

> there is no good 10' experience today on Linux.

What about Xbmc/Kodi? Works great on a raspberry pi hooked up to my TV... Has been doing that since the early 2000's when it ran on my brothers Xbox (original) but that was pre-Linux.

Edit: spelling

100% CPU redrawing the screen continuously. Or was, last I checked.

Here's a link with a lot more information. The big news today is that the UI component for Bigscreen has just gone live as a part of the KDE 5.26 beta, which is relatively straightforward to install on any Linux distro (or image to a USB stick): https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.25.90/

Maybe the post's main link should be changed to this one? That Bigscreen website seems to be confusing and out of date.

It makes me happy Big Buck Bunny is still being used for demonstrations.

What is a "10' experience"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-foot_user_interface

There are 10' experiences for Linux (Kodi, Plex, and Steam Big Picture are what I know of), but these aren't integrated into the desktop, they are focused on TV/movies and gaming respectively, so KDE focusing on this problem is something new.

I've never heard this term. Thanks for the great explanation.

Sitting three metres from the screen I presume.

No way. that would be a 9'9" experience, I believe..

Although I think your point is correct.

I'd say 10' is within the margin of error considering how many significant figures they gave in their estimate.

It’s the common term for a user interface that’s large and legible to users sitting across a room from the display: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-foot_user_interface

Is this essentially Lineage for smart TVs?

Can the vendor OS be wiped from these devices?

If so, is there a list?

I think that's close to, or part of, their vision: https://plasma-bigscreen.org/vision/

What they have in the Downloads section now is basically a variety of distro images which you can run on a Pi, or a device that supports pmOS, etc. There's a long way to go before you could buy any random smart TV and flash this onto it. Though maybe less long if you have a smart TV with an embedded Pi which might be a thing these days?

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