Most fresh graduates could be forgiven for taking time out to rest, relax and defrag their post-study mind, but one comp-sci student decided to devote their downtime by reviving KDE’s TV-focused front-end — and the results look great!
Plasma Bigscreen is a shell designed for use on televisions and other large displays, using a remote for navigation rather than mouse or keyboard. It’s been around for a while (I wrote about it in 2022) but if I’m frank—I’m not, I’m Joey—I’d forgotten it existed.
KDE developer Espi, a regular contributor to Plasma Mobile, had not.
But he found the project in a state of limbo. Though ported to Plasma 6, Bigscreen had seen scant development in the years since and had been dropped from the main Plasma release cycle and from the package repos of most Linux distributions.
In a detailed blog post Espi says that upon seeing this dearth in development effort he “sensed an opportunity” to do something about it, and decided to “take a swing at improving the project” over the course of a week.
And its new programming makes for some must-see TV.
Plasma Bigscreen Sees a Big Refresh
Espi’s big Bigscreen revamp brings the home screen UI much closer to the original Breeze Ocean mockups, with a cleaner, flatter design, a dynamically expanding clock widget, and a KRunner-based search tools to make finding and launching apps faster.
The Settings interface was rejigged, now sporting a sidebar layout, using vertical scrolling stacks for toggles and content, and making use of a custom-made component library (which other contributors and developers can use) for building TV-focused UIs.
Beyond what’s visible on screen are extensive changes under the hood, ranging from QML library updates and module fixes to greater use of tools and other Plasma components.
All of it is real, working code.
Espi tested the work on his television by compiling Bigscreen on postmarketOS and running it off of a Raspberry Pi 5.
Xbox controller support worked in lieu of a compatible TV remote, as did a number of apps and games, including the stock Bigscreen web browser Aura as well as apps from Flathub, like YouTube client VacuumTube, Kodi, and even SuperTuxKart.
Remaining challenges
Given that Espi only spent a week working on Bigscreen, the progress achieved is commendable and a solid reminder in the power of passionate volunteers in pushing open source projects forward.
But there’s more to do, like solving the lack of a virtual keyboard with arrow navigation (one is planned as a separate Plasma project) and improving the handling and configuring of modern TV remotes.
For now, Espi has returned to working on Plasma Mobile, but says he will continue to review merge requests to Bigscreen and help new contributors.
The project’s future will hinge on others getting involved, and would benefit from having a clear direction set out to focus development effort. It also needs to reconnect to the Plasma release cycle if it’s to reach more eyeballs and gain feedback.
Anyone interested in sampling the current state of Bigscreen will have to compile it from source using the source code on the KDE Invent or fetch it through KDE nightly repos – at least until other packages are made available.