KDE Plasma 6.7 Beta Released With Plasma Big Screen, Union Modules

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Dotaproffessional@reddit

Big screen doesn't make a lot of sense to me as video playback with drm and proprietary codecs is a weakness of Linux yeah?

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FeelThePoveR@reddit

It's really not, codecs just aren't included on the big distros by default but you can still get them.

For me on Fedora I had to run 3 commands to get them - add nonfree repo, swap ffmpeg, install media-group and that's it.

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I changed literally nothing in regards to drm and I can play stuff from Prime Video.
Can't say about the other services as I didn't bother to sub to anything else although I don't see why they would be any different?

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Scheeseman99@reddit

Can you play it in 4K with Dolby Vision? No. Will you ever be able to do that? Also no. That's where the gate is, not just playback of the lowest quality video stream.

It's an unsolvable problem on desktop Linux, anything that would try to solve it would impose a bunch of conditions that would make it incompatible with any truly open source system stack. If you're running Jellyfin or Plex with an Unraid server full of MKVs downloaded from usenet and torrents then you're fine, but you can't expect everyone to do that (or even most people) so in a practical sense high quality streaming video from commercial services is always going to be a dead-end hope on Linux.

Though I don't think Plasma big screen is wasted effort, I think console-like hardware like Steam Deck could use a bigscreen-native UX that allows seamless switching between Steam and other stores and launchers rather than the bifucated, Steam-specific setup SteamOS and it's alikes have now.

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FeelThePoveR@reddit

If you're running Jellyfin or Plex with an Unraid server full of MKVs downloaded from usenet and torrents then you're fine

Just a technical correction, you don't need an unraid server - you can stream directly from debrid, usenet or torrents (in that order in terms of user experience).

Though I don't think Plasma big screen is wasted effort, I think console-like hardware like Steam Deck could use a bigscreen-native UX that allows seamless switching between Steam and other stores and launchers rather than the bifucated, Steam-specific setup SteamOS and it's alikes have now.

100% agreed on that this will be the main usage for this right now (outside of plex/jellyfin if somebody actually setups that).

BUT there's one thing I would like to add.
Right now watching stuff from the big streaming services may be a pain in terms of quality - how could that be remediated?

Well in several ways actually, first there could be workarounds - from what I've gathered sometimes you can get higher quality streaming with user agent manipulation and browser plugins, but that's a pain in the ass and doesn't solve anything.
The ultimate workaround would be getting hardware acceleration support on something like WinBoat (which is being worked on) so you could comfortably run Windows browser/streaming app in a container that still feels/displays like a normal Linux app, but again that will still require some know-how to set up.

So what would be the best/proper solution?
Increasing the userbase so that the service providers have to change how they treat the platform and maybe start offering HDR10+ Advanced as well as Dolby Vision, but you can't do that if the UI experience is shit as nobody will bother using it in the first place.

In short:
Step one - make the system user experience good
Step two - make this available on premade hardware so users will get to experience this without setting up stuff themselves (like steam machines)
Step three - complain to the service provider/report bugs that the content is not being displayed as advertised
Step four - pray that there's enough complaints that something will change
Step five - profit???

You may say that's impossible, but impossible is slowly becoming possible as we've seen with EA first pulling out support for Linux with their anticheat, and now hiring people to work on anticheat for Linux.

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Scheeseman99@reddit

Just a technical correction, you don't need an unraid server - you can stream directly from debrid, usenet or torrents (in that order in terms of user experience).

I was being specific because it's what I know :)

Winboat won't work, hardware accelerated video isn't the problem. Windows knows when it's being run in a VM, this trips Widevine and knocks it down to L3 (1080p at most, 720p normally, 480p at worst, in some cases it won't work at all). Widevine L1 is top level and enables the most features, but requires hardware-level integration, usually a trusted execution environment; TPM, secure boot, attestation.

This isn't like Wine/Proton where once games work, they (mostly) continue working. There's no way to bootstrap it. Every workaround is transient, a security bug that gets fixed, which eventually forces people away as access breaks in cycles.

It's impossible in the sense that you can't engineer a solution, only create escalation after escalation until the cost becomes too high for one party over the other. People are barely informed about the specifics and I'm not being mean here just making a point: you didn't even bring up Widevine in your workaround, did you know it existed? If it was invisible to you, how invisible do you think DRM is the wider public? People have already handed over control.

This problem is a societal one, we need to start conversations about whether DRM should be a thing that can legally be allowed to exist at all.

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FeelThePoveR@reddit

Oh alright that makes.

I knew about Widevine some technicalities about it and that L3 is the level Linux supports, L1 being what Windows supports.

What I didn't know was that VMs also trip this up (hence my assumption that running it seamlessly in a container would be possible if proper hardware acceleration could be worked out).

I agree that DRM is an issue and that there should be a conversation about this, but I also think that solutions could be worked out if there's a big enough userbase for the services to actually care.

Its not a perfect solution (getting rid of DRM would be optimal), but a more realistic one given the current situation and I still believe we're getting closer to it with this implementation of Big Screen and later on with the release of Steam Machines (and any other out the box experience for that matter).

If it was invisible to you, how invisible do you think DRM is the wider public?

Generally I may seem a bit more ignorant about the matter (that's because I'm currently not affected by it), but for me it wasn't invisible back when I was using those services - mainly due to stream "blacking out" when being streamed on discord.
I actually set up Debrid + Usenet + Self-hosted management service + Jellyfin combo because of this so that I can do online watch parties with friends without dealing with all that crap so I certainly don't fall into the category that handed over control and I'm certainly not content with the current status quo on the matter.

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Scheeseman99@reddit

I don't think that it can work, it's wishful thinking and even less realistic than legislative change. The majority of people consuming streaming services are on phones, tablets and TV boxes. Those are platforms that are already completely DRM encumbered, and the people that bought them are the streamer's core customer base; they've already bought-in. Offering something that does less, worse, isn't going to convince anyone to switch outside of a miniscule fraction of die-hards because, well, I wouldn't and I'm a die hard. I tried it your way already, snatching Chromebook widevine dlls to get streaming services working through Kodi and it was a gigantic hassle, frequently broke and once I got a display that was HDR capable, I was hobbling the video quality of the services I paid for unless I made a change. It's why I bought an AppleTV.

You have engineer brain. You think you can tech your way out of every problem, sorry, you can't. The issues here are bigger and more deeply embedded into a greater societal issue, driven by corporate lobbying and legal frameworks that have gradually eroded the concept of ownership in favour of top down vertical control over access to media.

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FeelThePoveR@reddit

Offering something that does less, worse, isn't going to convince anyone to switch outside of a miniscule fraction of die-hards because, well, I wouldn't and I'm a die hard.

That's why I mentioned out of the box Linux experiences. If somebody buys a Steam Machine and hooks it up to a TV to act like a game console, they probably won't be installing Windows on it and they might try out using it for other things like watching videos.

Even for legislative change you need enough pissed off people to sign off on some legislation/proposal - and how do you get those people?
In the same way that you could "try" forcing a change in those services - by confronting enough people with reality and in my opinion the best way to do that currently would be by getting them to buy hardware that might not be for video streaming, but "could" be used for it if it wasn't for the arbitrary restrictions.

Sure nobody would by a Steam Machine explicitly to stream content, but if they can "try", some people for sure will try using it for that. That's also why I've been putting emphasis on the out of the box experience, nearly nobody will set up a Linux machine on their own, but if they get it from the store than that's a different story.

You have engineer brain.

Probably, I AM an engineer after all hahah.

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Scheeseman99@reddit

I don't think that's likely, given the expectations of the market Valve's hardware is targeting. It can help as part of a broader push, to have an example of why the current DRM schemes are exploitative and anti-consumer, but it's not a solution in of itself. Particularly when smart TVs exist that have apps built-in to handle streaming services at their highest quality already; actual access to those services aren't the problem, it's the gating of it that is and that's a much more difficult, nuanced problem to fight against since the inconvenience to the common consumer, who isn't informed about the details, is non-existent. The issue is anti-trust, captured markets and corporate monopolies.

Probably, I AM an engineer after all hahah.

It's really common for engineers to think that their experience with engineering systems can extend outside of the scope of their expertise, when it usually does not. Socio-political or legal systems aren't as predictable and don't play by programmatic rules.

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Dotaproffessional@reddit

I'm saying using Linux as like a htpc seems suboptimal if you're trying to replace like a normal TV box. It would only be viable for something like self hosted jellyfin or something

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FeelThePoveR@reddit

Yeah it'll be use-case dependent for sure.

For most people it'll be easier to just setup a TV box, but for those that either just have a really big library or use alternative ways of acquiring content (i.e. Jellyfin paired with a debrid service or usenet or whatever else) it could be nice.

As for the reason this may makes sense to implement - Valve, I wouldn't be suprised if KDE implemented in preparation for Steam Machines which were advertised for couch gaming among other things, and if you have a PC plugged into your TV why not make the DE UI usable from couch distance.

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Dotaproffessional@reddit

Given steam already has it's own compositor, I'm actually more surprised they aren't working on some media apps for the steam machine

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FeelThePoveR@reddit

They probably aren't that keen on reinventing the wheel when there are other options available.

They also seem to avoid dealing with codecs like fire - official Valve Proton doesn't include codecs so sometimes in-game videos just fail to play. The option they went with in some cases is reprocessing of the video files - those are downloaded as a part of the shader cache download.

This wouldn't really work for a video playback app for example so that may be a part of why they aren't bothering with it as well lol

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Dotaproffessional@reddit

Thank god(s) for glorious eggroll

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KayJune001@reddit

DRM yeah, if you’re playing content via Netflix or similar, but the codecs are super easily available nowadays.

I think the overlap between people on Linux and the people who watch.. uniquely acquired content, though, is relatively high.

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TotallyYourGrandpa@reddit

Can you playback Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos? I would love to have an option to play those formats from something that's not a Nvidia Shield or Apple TV.

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KayJune001@reddit

Dolby Vision is pretty locked down, so there’s no way to use it on Linux yet iirc, but HDR10+ does work and that looks just as good imo. Dolby Atmos can either be converted to multi-channel PCM or passthrough to a receiver that does support Atmos, so it does work for most people who have an Atmos setup.

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Enthusedchameleon@reddit

You can't. (There are lots of complications and workarounds and even then a subpar experience AFAICT). Of course I could be wrong, or be drawing from outdated info, etc.

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ruiiiij@reddit

I don't have much use for big screen but hopefully this will help accelerate the development of a tablet or phone ui.

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Mr_Lumbergh@reddit

Bigscreen is exactly the sort of thing I've been waiting for on my streaming and emulation box.

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Lawnmover_Man@reddit

Out of interest, what software are you using right now, and what can Plasma Big Screen do what you couldn't do before?

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Mr_Lumbergh@reddit

On that box I have Mint XFCE; that goes back a few years before the box really became what it is now. What I’d like to get out of it is an interface like that of a smart TV with large selectable icons I can easily see across the room and the ability to navigate them via TV remote of game controller.

Likely that means repaving with something new that will have the latest KDE, which I’m fine with.

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Lawnmover_Man@reddit

There are already many solutions for this, and have been for a very long time. I'm using Linux on my HTPC since 15 years now. I'm using Kodi, which his meant for exactly this use case, and has a long list of useful addons for pretty much anything you'd like. On top of that, it has built-in support for RetroArch, meaning you can use it as a form of launcher for retro games, but you can also set up launching any kind of other emulator.

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Mr_Lumbergh@reddit

I’ve always had my best luck keeping apps discrete, and have largely abandoned Kodi in favour of Sremio.

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Lawnmover_Man@reddit

I'm not sure if I understand your use case. The only functionality you want is launching apps with a gamepad. I don't see why the available solutions, including Kodi, are not what you want?

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Mr_Lumbergh@reddit

I have various media players outside of Kodi and various media players outside of RetroPie. I want large bubble icons in the DE I can easily see from across the room and navigate to with a paired remote or game controller.

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Lawnmover_Man@reddit

You can do that with Kodi. I don't see why this doesn't already satisfy your need.

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StartersOrders@reddit

I wonder if it’d be good on tablets too? GNOME tends to kill my Surface Pro 5.

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F3z345W6AY4FGowrGcHt@reddit

I use gnome on my surface pro 6. How does it kill yours?

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Banepa@reddit

by smothering it while it sleeps.

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Hosein_Lavaei@reddit

I would use plasma mobile on it instead

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Gaspz@reddit

I think Big Screen is more aimed to TVs (correct me if I'm wrong). On my Surface Pro 6 I've been using plasma mobile.

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TURBOKAN@reddit

Yo nice to see bigscreen could make it into official release

I'm still dreaming a day to see an openbsd based smart tv with plasma bigscreen slapped onto it (maybe powered by pi too?). It would be the ultimate smart tv

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No-Photograph-5058@reddit

Custom smartTV that doesn't require some google play account BS, only issue is getting DRM stuff on streaming services to play nice with it

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TURBOKAN@reddit

Does BSD have widevine?

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No-Photograph-5058@reddit

I doubt in any form that would be useful for an opensource TV, L3 is probably restricted to manufacturers/corps they trust

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TURBOKAN@reddit

L3 is at software level. L1 is the problem as it relies on hardware

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No-Photograph-5058@reddit

ah yeah, I never get it the right way round

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m3xtre@reddit

seriously, why are kde devs so much more (apparently) productive than gnome devs? As far as I could research at a glance they have roughly the same resources.

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DuendeInexistente@reddit

Because KDE looks at how people uses their computer and seeks to facilitate their organic flow, while gnome raises its nose and tries to tell them how to do their job and conduct their workflow.

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m3xtre@reddit

how is this related to productivity in writing software at all

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Waryle@reddit

It's not, it's just the daily Gnome hate comment

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the_abortionat0r@reddit

Gnome devs brought that on themselves.

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Waryle@reddit

Not more than Windows, iOS, MacOS, Android devs, to name just a few. You could include most app developers actually.

Gnome is polished, bare-bones, opiniated and efficient. Some may like it (me), some may find it lacking for their use, or just plain dislike it, and it's ok to move along.

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DuendeInexistente@reddit

Because it's the same issue gnome's devs, and a bunch of tech nerds have. They want to tell users how to engage with technology instead of looking at how they already do.

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Lawnmover_Man@reddit

Wasn't Plasma Big Screen a project that has been abandoned and now reactivated? The project is 7 years old.

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MenuSoft7875@reddit

I swear to goodness, if anybody makes THAT joke with the version numbers...

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the_abortionat0r@reddit

Who cares?

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OrganizationEasy9977@reddit

😭its over

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Pugs-r-cool@reddit

⁶🤷‍♂️⁷

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jamesfarted09@reddit

Bigscreen is a nice addition, I don't daily drive KDE anymore but if I were to ever setup a theater PC, that would be a contender for the UI.

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m4teri4lgirl@reddit

Do they still think I want their dumbass password manager injecting itself all over the place

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IngwiePhoenix@reddit

Plasma Big Screen?! Hoooooly, haven't heared THAT one in a hot minute.

Finally a TV experience that isn't Android or Kodi? I'd be sooo here for that. Like, I know Kodi is good and all, but I never managed for it to just display my Jellyfin shows under "Shows" - I always had to go into the addon menu and stuff. So clunky... But if we get a TV experience that optionally could go into Steam Big Picture or other remote-friendly apps? Heeeeeck yeah.

Stupidly excited about an ultra nieche. x)

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Lawnmover_Man@reddit

But if we get a TV experience that optionally could go into Steam Big Picture or other remote-friendly apps?

Kodi can do that already, and it's doing this since literal decades. I'm all for more options, but out of curiosity: What can Plasma Big Picture do that Kodi can't?

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DenominatorOfReddit@reddit

Will it be able to support all the features a set top box like an Apple TV can? I know HDR is getting better under Linux.

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Ruben_NL@reddit

About the kodi/jellyfin part: There are 2 Jellyfin addons for kodi: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/clients/kodi/. To get your shows actually in the "shows" menu, you need the Jellyfin for Kodi addon.

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IngwiePhoenix@reddit

I'll give it a try - haven't done so in about half a year and some so I wanna see if it works now. Thank you for the pointers :)

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alex2003super@reddit

Similar to Plex vs PlexKodiConnect

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KwyjiboTheGringo@reddit

As far as I can tell, the 6.7 beta hasn't been released yet? I tried switching to it using the unstable branch, but it's on 6.8.

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FattyDrake@reddit

Plasma betas for the next release are .80 and above. For example, Plasma 6.6.90 is an incremental version for beta 6.7.

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KwyjiboTheGringo@reddit

Oh okay. I'm not sure where bigscreen is, since I don't have that option at the login screen or anywhere in the menus that I can find.

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Happy_Phantom@reddit

What the Hell? Skipping version 6.6.6 ???

\m/

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PointiestStick@reddit

That's the next one for the Plasma 6.6 series!

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Happy_Phantom@reddit

Hell yes, and you're damn right!

\m/

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Lol43216789@reddit

67

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HandwashHumiliate666@reddit

How original

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DeltyOverDreams@reddit

You dropped a dot

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ilep@reddit

Direct link to changelog: https://kde.org/announcements/changelogs/plasma/6/6.6.5-6.6.90/

Saved you a click (or two).

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Horseshoetheoryreal@reddit

Interesting, makes it more viable in TV and plus Valve releasing new Steambox sooner and later which is good timing

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ImNotABotScoutsHonor@reddit

sooner and later

Sooner than* later

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Ops_Pab@reddit

This is going to be more interesting. Excisted to try it.

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Linuksoid@reddit

Is bigscreen included in the main Plasma release or something you have to install seperately? If so, how do i activate it on my existing KDE Plasma install

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lajka30@reddit (OP)

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Plasma-6.7-Beta-Big-Screen

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TechManWalker@reddit

I have been like begging for Plasma Bigscreen since a long time ago, and now I'm quite amazed to finally see it being released again.

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ScootSchloingo@reddit

I’m interested to see how Union shapes up. I don’t know if I don’t understand it but whenever I see examples of Union UIs it’s looked exactly like Qt/Breeze.

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gmes78@reddit

but whenever I see examples of Union UIs it’s looked exactly like Qt/Breeze.

So it's working correctly.

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onespaceman@reddit

They go into the reasons for union here https://quantumproductions.info/articles/2026-05/union-spring-2026-update

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Infinity-of-Thoughts@reddit

It's my understanding that Union is just the new theming engine?

It doesn't mean they're going to change how Plasma looks, just make it better/simpler/easier for everyone else to theme their apps, right?

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aloobhujiyaay@reddit

Also curious to see how Union Modules evolve. KDE has been slowly moving toward cleaner settings organization

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TURBOKAN@reddit

I assume Union will replace qtquick, kirigami etc.?

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NotQuiteLoona@reddit

It would not replace anything, but rather would be a universal theming engine for Qt Quick, Qt Widgets, etc., as now they all require different themes and look slightly different.

You can read more there: https://quantumproductions.info/articles/2026-05/union-spring-2026-update

There is also a screenshots of an application that shows differences between different implementations of Breeze theme.

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