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?
I’m using NixOS with KDE for HTPC, though I’m not sure I’d recommend it unless you’re eager to learn Nix.
The upshot is that it’s super stable, and everything is declared and versioned in the git repo, including my lirc device codes and node-red automation flow for lirc and mqtt. (The HTPC shows up as a mqtt switch in home assistant for turning on and off, and the HTPC turns on or off the TV and amplifier through IR as the PC turns on or off)
I mostly use Firefox and various streaming sites for video, and Spotify desktop client for music. A gyro mouse/keyboard is the main input device, plus wireless Xbox360 controllers for streaming games with Moonlight (from Flathub)