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?

  • statler_waldorf@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    1·
    1 day ago

    I did something similar fairly recently as my Roku TCL kept getting worse. I had a NUC only running PiHole. I mainly use Plex with occasional YouTube via GrayJay so your use case may be different.

    I tried LibreElec, but it kept hard crashing - maybe a video issue? And getting Pihole running on it was a pain.

    I jumped to KDE Neon Big Screen, but Plex HTPC ran like a slideshow at 4k. Everything else ran fine but I didn’t spend much time troubleshooting.

    I next tried Mint and got it working just fine. Plex, Grayjay, Pihole, and a cheap wireless remote with a keyboard on the back. I set the desktop scale to 200-300%, hid the taskbar, and put a couple huge icons on the desktop. It’s not perfect, but it’s simple enough for the kids to figure out.