this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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I run an HTPC that works fully with my AirMouse Remote I bought for it for ~$15USD. It uses Flex Launcher running on Debian.
Basically, I use it for Plex, some Netflix, retrogaming, and Steam.
I was in a similar boat to you were I looked at Plasma Big Screen, LibreElec, etc. Plasma BigScreen was too buggy or unmaintained. LibreElec is great if you want to play local stuff, but terrible for streaming things like Netflix. In the end I said "screw it. I'll make my own". Now it's the center of my living room.
That looks amazing! Are the icons you have there, for example, Netflix, is that a desktop shortcut to open up the browser and load the website?
Your use case is very similar to mine. Thank you for sharing.
It loads the web page in full screen kiosk mode in Chrome.
You could also always nativefier it and make it like a webapp. I have some sites setup like that on my machine.
Does that offer any advantages over the kiosk mode functionality? Looks like that repo was abandoned in 2023 and marked as archived.
What repo? Use npm to get nativefier, the one from regular apt etc. are not current, they’re copies of older versions. Dunno why someone did that.
The GitHub repo of the maintainer shows that the project is archived and dead.
Again of what? Of nativefier?
Yes
Well it does what it’s supposed to do, so who cares.
If you look at the repo, the very first line in the readme links to an issue that briefly explains why you should care.
Unmaintained software comes in two categories:
Nativefier falls in the second category and the second clause. Don't use it.
Ok so, it doesn’t seem to me to be the case. But if you’re indicating a better solution came along, what would that be? I’m fine with nativefier for the two items I made with it. But if there’s something better then please do tell.
Again The issue on the repo. The developers recommend just using the app feature of the browsers to get similar functionality without the security concerns.
As I said, I’m fine with it until something equally easy and simple becomes available.
Edit: just to clarify, I did look and ask around a lot before having discovered nativefier. There does not seem to be an easy way to get a browser standalone window with no controls, bars, tabs etc. only the window and the min/max/rest control box. If there’s a way to do that then I would like to certainly.