After years of silence and stagnation, the project Plasma Bigscreen has been given a new lease on life. Originally conceived as a TV interface based on KDE technologies, this platform comes back to life thanks to the efforts of independent developers like Devin Lin.
Bigscreen Plasma was first introduced in 2020 with the intention of offering a full desktop experience on large screens, using remote controls or voice assistants instead of a keyboard and mouse. However, Its development was frozen because it could not be adapted to KDE Plasma 6 or the Qt 6 libraries. Today, with new goals and a clearer focus, the project is looking to regain its place in the KDE ecosystem, hoping to be part of Plasma 6.5.
In its early stages, Plasma Bigscreen relied to a large degree from the open source virtual assistant Mycroft, specific hardware was even developed to integrate it. But with the closure of Mycroft and the cessation of sponsorship by Blue Systems, the project lost momentumDespite being ported to Plasma 6 and Qt 6 last year, there have been no public releases or previews. This recently changed thanks to the intervention of Devin Lin and other contributors, who took the initiative to clean up the code, redesign the interface, and revamp the configuration tools, giving the project a new lease on life.
A modern and focused interface
The visual redesign was one of the first priorities. Removed panels with shadows and background fills, adopting a more modern, flat style suited to large screens. Expanded screen clocks, background blurring for unfocused elements, and a new KRunner-based view that allows you to search for apps without having to manually scroll have been added. List rendering has been optimized using ListView, improving performance and reducing resource usage on devices like the Raspberry Pi 5.
El The old configuration system was completely redesigned with a category navigation sidebar and an easy-to-use two-panel layout with remote control. Devin developed a QML component library oriented to television, which allows modules (KCM) to adopt a uniform layout. Key modules such as display, sound, Wi-Fi networking, KDE Connect, and large screen settings have been ported to this new structure, improving their usability in non-touch environments.
As part of the modernization, Envmanager was integrated, a tool inherited from Plasma Mobile which allows you to set specific configurations according to the type of environment (desktop, mobile, or TV). This prevents distributions from having to apply custom patches for each case, centralizing the management of system variables and parameters in a single control point.
Real-life testing and control with gamepads
To validate the user experience, The new Plasma Bigscreen was tested on a Raspberry Pi 5 running postmarketOS.. It is also possible to install it from the Arch Linux AUR repositories or using Flatpak packages. As for the remote control, plasma-remotecontrollers have been reused, which allows you to use HDMI-CEC compatible gamepads and TV remotes as if they were keyboards, although CEC support still needs work.
TV-compatible app ecosystem
Although the old "Mycroft Skills" are no longer available, Various applications designed or adapted for television have been tested. Among them are:
- Kody: Multimedia center with arrow navigation.
- Vacuum Tube: YouTube TV web interface packaged as Flatpak.
- SuperTux and SuperTuxKart: Games compatible with controllers.
- Aura and Plank: Web browser and media player developed by KDE.
This new environment is capable of running many traditional desktop applications thanks to Flatpak support, which expands its reach without compromising the user experience.
Pending challenges and next steps
Despite the progress, There are aspects that still require attentionThere is no virtual keyboard with arrow keys, although this is being worked on within the Plasma Keyboard project. It has not been finished porting either el configuration module for remote controls and gamepads. Another challenge is the lack of a specific design framework for television interfaces, which requires the use of custom components and a lot of specific code.
Following its discontinuation with the arrival of Plasma 6, many distributions removed their Plasma Bigscreen packages. However, The goal now is to reincorporate it into the KDE release cycle, starting with Plasma 6.5.
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