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Best HTPC distro? (europe.pub)
submitted 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) by freebee@sh.itjust.works to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
 

I caved to black Friday promotions and ordered myself a fan less MSI Cubi N ADL S with N100, 4GB ram, 128 GB m.2 SSD and a Rii F8 remote.

To run as "smart TV", mainly jellyfin, dvb-t2 antenna, YouTube, local public channel streaming from their websites.

Which is the hottest HTPC distro for this right now in your opinion?

It needs to be easy to use for non-techie and super stable and reliable, rather than fancy or brand new and hype.

To replace my current "attach the steamdeck to TV when needed" setup (so I can play on it while something is being watched). And this was experienced as not easy enough for non-techies?

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[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 2 points 54 minutes ago

My parents and I use Bazzite. I know it’s mainly used for gaming, but since you can add non Steam programs just fine, it works great for a media PC. You can configure Jellyfin to style itself for TV and work with keyboard/controller. There’s also a YouTube TV app (I forget what it’s called, but it’s on Flathub).

I use the windows gyro remote from Pepper Jobs, and it works great. The PC sees it as a keyboard.

[–] superglue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 hour ago

I did the same project about a year ago. I started with LibreElec, but there were a lot of weird bugs and quirks, and I was at the point where it was crashing 3 or 4 times a day. Whenever I went to get help on their forums it seemed like every thread of theirs was closed with no resolution due to piracy in the logs.

After that I installed PopOS and use Kodi that way and its been really solid.

[–] nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

You might be able to install Android x86 on this, and use it however you would use a typical Android box. Another option is libreelec.

If I were you, I would install Nobara or Bazzite, the HTPC version. Which can boot directly into Steam Big Picture. You can install Jellyfin client, add the TV version to steam and you can launch it with steam big picture mode, and Jellyfin's Linux version of TV mode supports gamepad navigation. For Android apps you can install Waydroid and use whatever android app you need, like SmartTube. It might be a bit time consuming to set up, but it will be way more versatile, as you can easily just boot to desktop mode and do other things as well. Plus, you can play games. Emulated games would run great on this device, you can use something like emudeck or retroarch.

[–] franzbroetchen@feddit.org 8 points 3 hours ago
[–] covecove@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 hours ago

I've been using casaOS and it worked kinda fine. not sure if the best, but it worked. https://youtu.be/qn192xxjmUA