I use Jellyfin on the Machine a lot, what's awesome is my TV remote is able to control SteamOS and also the Jellyfin app! HDMI CEC is a must now for me!
I also have the Youtube app with vacuumtube which works flawlessly!
this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2026
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Steam Hardware
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You can try grayjay. Its on flathub, has youtube and nebula setup, and has built in support for controllers.
I use my steamdeck in a docking station with extra USB ports.
You can get a FLIRC or equivalent IR receiver to navigate with an old/universal remote or USB keyboard.
I load PLEX-HTPC as a non-steam game.
I also loaded Firefox for Youtube with support for uBlock and other extensions.
How's the navigation of something like YouTube in the browser with a remote? This is another curiosity of mine
Not OP, but I have a dedicated gaming PC connected to a TV for a similar experience (Bazzite for the OS, primarily running Steam Big Picture Mode). Plex HTPC has been pretty smooth to switch between when not gaming. I would recommend using something like VacuumTube (has adblock and sponsorblock settings baked in) to have a more comparable TV experience if you’re looking to watch YouTube too.
I'm planning to eventually do a fresh Linux install on my Machine which launches straight into Plasma Bigscreen.
Already got the multimedia situation sorted out with HDR, 4k and audio passthrough via Jellyfin MPV Shim. Now I just need to check if the Machine still gets firmware updates when launching Steam even when it is not running SteamOS.
Didn't have time to do the setup yet but I'm planning to replace my Odroid N2+ running CoreELEC with this.
For controlling it I wanted to use my Remote 3 and/or the Steam controller.
What makes you want to change to Plasma Bigscreen? I said it in another comment but one big attraction to SteamOS and/or the Machine is the low power idle state, like a regular console or streamer. Curious how other distros handle this.
If you have any PC around the house you can install SteamOS or Bazzite or even LinuxTV onto a USB stick, boot into it and give it a go on your TV. Most streaming services can be "installed" as a browser shortcut on the home screen if there's no app for it.
If you see it working for you and the fam is willing to learn how to use it, buy the steam machine or a small custom pc with better specs for the same money with SteamOS or whatever you like.
One thing I'm interested to know is the idle state of a normal PC vs a normal PC running SteamOS vs the SM on SteamOS. The PS5 pulls something miniscule like 4 watts when it's in rest mode. A regular PC will probably use significantly more. So this is part of the machine's attraction to me; I'm assuming Valve got that well optimized since my Deck is okay at it too. But if any SteamOS machine does that well, hell yeah I'm all in.
It's mostly my primary, but I mostly only stream and play steam games with it.
My problem with the machine for thr use of multimedia is that it wasnt really designed in mind for dense storage to host media, ao youre limited to streaming unless you got 8tb ssds layong around
That's okay my server is another machine.