8 ms·

I realize "Plasma" is the name of the KDE presentation layer across all platforms, but it's mildly awkward to see in this context considering plasma TVs have on

by Lammy 4y ago

I realize "Plasma" is the name of the KDE presentation layer across all platforms, but it's mildly awkward to see in this context considering plasma TVs have only been a dead technology for six years or so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_display https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_display

irjustin 4y ago
Admittedly i thought this as well. was hoping for a new plasma tech! Not that i think it's better, just nostalgia - it was the first 'new gen' tv I owned back in 2007. Heavy but well worth it at the time.
- greyhair 4y ago
  Still running my Panasonic 50" Plasma from that era. So heavy. And yes they are power hogs, but in reality, ours really isn't on that often. Three, maybe four hours a week, on average. But oh, the picture quality back then, compared to LCDs and rear projection. No comparison, and even today, it holds up well.
kbumsik 4y ago
Not sure in other countries, but in my country (Korea) they were called PDP and rarely called plasma TV even knowing the technology behind it. It's a bit funny thinking about "Plasma" but it should be fine. BTW, it had been dead for 10+ years...time flies so fast.
- grishka 4y ago
  In Russia there was definitely a period when any large flat panel TV was called "plasma".
megablast 4y ago
donatj 4y ago
Yup. I wandered around page for about 20 seconds before realizing it wasn't some sort of open source hardware plasma TV.
- sandebert 4y ago
  I only realized it after reading this thread. Seems like a very confusing name chosen.
  - atoav 4y ago
    In combination with "Bigscreen" for sure.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    Plasma (display) TVs are mostly dead - or at least no longer mainstream. On topic: I'd love to have my TV run an open source OS that can run all the streaming apps to avoid OEMs snooping on what I'm watching
    - comboy 4y ago
      You have HDMI port, there are RPis and others, I don't think TVs are running image recognition on HDMI input (yet).
      - lrvick 4y ago
        They do, which is why you should never connect them to the internet.
        comboy 4y ago
        Seriously? Well not connecting them to the internet works less and less, Amazon is rolling out their 900Mhz mesh with echo devices and there's LTE-M, NB-IoT and such. The idea of not letting a device connect to the Internet is slowly becoming a thing of the past unless you live in a faraday cage (which is becoming more and more tempting). Oh, correction, thanks to mesh networks like that of Alexa living in a Faraday cage is not actually enough if at least one device is connected. Yay.
marktolson 4y ago
I'm still rocking my 12 year old plasma TV, the thing won't die!
- sergers 4y ago
  I still have a 50" 720p Toshiba plasma, from 2006. Won't die... Been wanting to upgrade to a newer larger tv for years, but this thing keeps running along without issue...
  - msk-lywenn 4y ago
    I don't understand why people think electronics are supposed to die. Even if they do, it's often just some capacitors that died in the power supply. An easy fix!
    - Szpadel 4y ago
      this is about justification. The current thing works fine but I would like the new expensive thing. I cannot justify expense of replacing working thing, but if it would die, then it's justified expense. it isn't about that it's more economical purchase when it dies, but I even saw people breaking stuff just so they "had to" buy new thing that they want.
      - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
        Perhaps you’ve noticed this already but having bought my last TV in 2008 I had no idea how cheap they’ve gotten! Checking Amazon right now I see a 50” 4k Samsung for $450.
        saaaaaam 4y ago
        Expense doesn’t always mean purely financial. There is an environmental cost to buying something new as well, and a social cost in supporting the manufacture of electronics that may have less than perfect supply chain ethical standards. I’m not saying this to be snarky or judgemental - your comment genuinely made me think about the issue and this was my response.
voidfunc 4y ago
- Toutouxc 4y ago
  I agree with what you’re saying, but you could’ve said it nicer.
- dTal 4y ago
  On the contrary - "Plasma" is one the best branding efforts in the open source ecosystem so far. It's not really confusing or hard to search for if you know that "Plasma" is a KDE product - for instance, Plasma Bigscreen is the first Google result for "kde plasma tv" and "kde tv". It's 8 years old, it covers several different products with a similar look and feel, and it sounds as cool as it looks. Big brands don't have an issue with using common words for product lines (like "surface" and "pixel"), and I don't see why open source should cede that ground.
captainmuon 4y ago
The name is generally really unfortunate, and I wish they would switch back to KDE for the Desktop Environment (and call the framework Klibs or KDElibs or something). Many people have positive associations with KDE, but associate Plasma with bloaty QML based desktop widgets from the KDE4 era. If they even associate it with KDE, and not with plasma TVs or blood plasma.
- account-5 4y ago
  Literally what I thought the thread was about, and actually why I avoided clicking into it so long.
- qwerty456127 4y ago
  People who know KDE hardly need marketing - they already know what is what and what they want. So they could name it whatever way, I only care about how well does that name integrate in the whole namespace of Linux apps/libs/packages. At the same time, for non-techies or people coming from other OSes Plasma automatically sounds cool, doesn't it? Nevertheless, as for what I personally feel, I agree - I like KDE better.
mcv 4y ago
Also, calling a home device "hackable" is not exactly going to make it attractive to most people. I know what they mean, but most people will read that very differently.
- dmantis 4y ago
  I highly doubt that "most people" would ever change their stock TV or TV dongle OS. So it targets geek and privacy-aware auditory and geek auditory understands what that means.
safety1st 4y ago
Frankly it's disappointing that most of the comments on HN so far have been focused on the "marketing" and the website. The FAQ states that this project is still in very early stages and not yet intended for use as a daily driver. So if you actually read the website, it's clear why it's not consumer grade. I would much rather they focus on developing than marketing at this stage. The basic thing going on here is simply that the KDE guys are working on a 10' experience and that's great, there is no good 10' experience today on Linux. Unless you count Steam Big Picture mode I guess? But a desktop environment which knows what to do about 10' would be really exciting. Edit: for anyone who's interested, this appears to be the repo for the Bigscreen project: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-bigscreen/activity https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-bigscreen/activity The distro images on the website may be out of date.
- chasil 4y ago
  Is this essentially Lineage for smart TVs? Can the vendor OS be wiped from these devices? If so, is there a list?
  - safety1st 4y ago
    I think that's close to, or part of, their vision: https://plasma-bigscreen.org/vision/ https://plasma-bigscreen.org/vision/ What they have in the Downloads section now is basically a variety of distro images which you can run on a Pi, or a device that supports pmOS, etc. There's a long way to go before you could buy any random smart TV and flash this onto it. Though maybe less long if you have a smart TV with an embedded Pi which might be a thing these days?
- brodouevencode 4y ago
  What is a "10' experience"?
  - safety1st 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-foot_user_interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-foot_user_interface There are 10' experiences for Linux (Kodi, Plex, and Steam Big Picture are what I know of), but these aren't integrated into the desktop, they are focused on TV/movies and gaming respectively, so KDE focusing on this problem is something new.

by Lammy 4y ago

irjustin 4y ago

Admittedly i thought this as well. was hoping for a new plasma tech! Not that i think it's better, just nostalgia - it was the first 'new gen' tv I owned back in 2007. Heavy but well worth it at the time.

greyhair 4y ago
Still running my Panasonic 50" Plasma from that era. So heavy. And yes they are power hogs, but in reality, ours really isn't on that often. Three, maybe four hours a week, on average. But oh, the picture quality back then, compared to LCDs and rear projection. No comparison, and even today, it holds up well.

kbumsik 4y ago

Not sure in other countries, but in my country (Korea) they were called PDP and rarely called plasma TV even knowing the technology behind it. It's a bit funny thinking about "Plasma" but it should be fine. BTW, it had been dead for 10+ years...time flies so fast.

grishka 4y ago
In Russia there was definitely a period when any large flat panel TV was called "plasma".

megablast 4y ago

donatj 4y ago

Yup. I wandered around page for about 20 seconds before realizing it wasn't some sort of open source hardware plasma TV.

sandebert 4y ago
I only realized it after reading this thread. Seems like a very confusing name chosen.
- atoav 4y ago
  In combination with "Bigscreen" for sure.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  Plasma (display) TVs are mostly dead - or at least no longer mainstream. On topic: I'd love to have my TV run an open source OS that can run all the streaming apps to avoid OEMs snooping on what I'm watching
  - comboy 4y ago
    You have HDMI port, there are RPis and others, I don't think TVs are running image recognition on HDMI input (yet).
    - lrvick 4y ago
      They do, which is why you should never connect them to the internet.
      - comboy 4y ago
        Seriously? Well not connecting them to the internet works less and less, Amazon is rolling out their 900Mhz mesh with echo devices and there's LTE-M, NB-IoT and such. The idea of not letting a device connect to the Internet is slowly becoming a thing of the past unless you live in a faraday cage (which is becoming more and more tempting). Oh, correction, thanks to mesh networks like that of Alexa living in a Faraday cage is not actually enough if at least one device is connected. Yay.

marktolson 4y ago

I'm still rocking my 12 year old plasma TV, the thing won't die!

sergers 4y ago
I still have a 50" 720p Toshiba plasma, from 2006. Won't die... Been wanting to upgrade to a newer larger tv for years, but this thing keeps running along without issue...
- msk-lywenn 4y ago
  I don't understand why people think electronics are supposed to die. Even if they do, it's often just some capacitors that died in the power supply. An easy fix!
  - Szpadel 4y ago
    this is about justification. The current thing works fine but I would like the new expensive thing. I cannot justify expense of replacing working thing, but if it would die, then it's justified expense. it isn't about that it's more economical purchase when it dies, but I even saw people breaking stuff just so they "had to" buy new thing that they want.
    - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
      Perhaps you’ve noticed this already but having bought my last TV in 2008 I had no idea how cheap they’ve gotten! Checking Amazon right now I see a 50” 4k Samsung for $450.
      - saaaaaam 4y ago
        Expense doesn’t always mean purely financial. There is an environmental cost to buying something new as well, and a social cost in supporting the manufacture of electronics that may have less than perfect supply chain ethical standards. I’m not saying this to be snarky or judgemental - your comment genuinely made me think about the issue and this was my response.

voidfunc 4y ago

Toutouxc 4y ago
I agree with what you’re saying, but you could’ve said it nicer.
dTal 4y ago
On the contrary - "Plasma" is one the best branding efforts in the open source ecosystem so far. It's not really confusing or hard to search for if you know that "Plasma" is a KDE product - for instance, Plasma Bigscreen is the first Google result for "kde plasma tv" and "kde tv". It's 8 years old, it covers several different products with a similar look and feel, and it sounds as cool as it looks. Big brands don't have an issue with using common words for product lines (like "surface" and "pixel"), and I don't see why open source should cede that ground.

captainmuon 4y ago

The name is generally really unfortunate, and I wish they would switch back to KDE for the Desktop Environment (and call the framework Klibs or KDElibs or something). Many people have positive associations with KDE, but associate Plasma with bloaty QML based desktop widgets from the KDE4 era. If they even associate it with KDE, and not with plasma TVs or blood plasma.

account-5 4y ago
Literally what I thought the thread was about, and actually why I avoided clicking into it so long.
qwerty456127 4y ago
People who know KDE hardly need marketing - they already know what is what and what they want. So they could name it whatever way, I only care about how well does that name integrate in the whole namespace of Linux apps/libs/packages. At the same time, for non-techies or people coming from other OSes Plasma automatically sounds cool, doesn't it? Nevertheless, as for what I personally feel, I agree - I like KDE better.

mcv 4y ago

Also, calling a home device "hackable" is not exactly going to make it attractive to most people. I know what they mean, but most people will read that very differently.

dmantis 4y ago
I highly doubt that "most people" would ever change their stock TV or TV dongle OS. So it targets geek and privacy-aware auditory and geek auditory understands what that means.

safety1st 4y ago

Frankly it's disappointing that most of the comments on HN so far have been focused on the "marketing" and the website. The FAQ states that this project is still in very early stages and not yet intended for use as a daily driver. So if you actually read the website, it's clear why it's not consumer grade. I would much rather they focus on developing than marketing at this stage. The basic thing going on here is simply that the KDE guys are working on a 10' experience and that's great, there is no good 10' experience today on Linux. Unless you count Steam Big Picture mode I guess? But a desktop environment which knows what to do about 10' would be really exciting. Edit: for anyone who's interested, this appears to be the repo for the Bigscreen project: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-bigscreen/activity https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-bigscreen/activity The distro images on the website may be out of date.

chasil 4y ago
Is this essentially Lineage for smart TVs? Can the vendor OS be wiped from these devices? If so, is there a list?
- safety1st 4y ago
  I think that's close to, or part of, their vision: https://plasma-bigscreen.org/vision/ https://plasma-bigscreen.org/vision/ What they have in the Downloads section now is basically a variety of distro images which you can run on a Pi, or a device that supports pmOS, etc. There's a long way to go before you could buy any random smart TV and flash this onto it. Though maybe less long if you have a smart TV with an embedded Pi which might be a thing these days?
brodouevencode 4y ago
What is a "10' experience"?
- safety1st 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-foot_user_interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-foot_user_interface There are 10' experiences for Linux (Kodi, Plex, and Steam Big Picture are what I know of), but these aren't integrated into the desktop, they are focused on TV/movies and gaming respectively, so KDE focusing on this problem is something new.