LinuxTV: Old PC, New Smart TV
LinuxTV: Old PC, New Smart TV
Contents
Somewhere in a cupboard, there is probably a laptop that nobody has switched on for two years. It still boots, its screen still works, and yet it has been quietly written off as "too old". LinuxTV offers that forgotten machine a second career in the living room. Maintained by developer guruswarupa and distributed as free, open-source software, it turns an ordinary PC into something that behaves rather like a smart TV, complete with a sofa-friendly home screen and your smartphone as the remote control. It is a young project, but a pleasingly well-documented one, so let us see what is actually in the box.
Meet LinuxTV
At its heart, LinuxTV is a TV-first app launcher for Linux. Instead of greeting you with a traditional desktop, tiny windows and a mouse pointer, it presents a fullscreen home screen designed to be read from across the room and navigated from the sofa. The project also bundles that launcher into a ready-made live image, so there is no need to assemble the pieces yourself: write it to a USB drive, boot, and you are in.
The problem it tackles will be familiar to anyone who has ever hooked a computer up to a television. Icons that look perfectly sensible on a monitor become hard to read from three metres away, launching a film takes too many steps, a keyboard and mouse are awkward on a coffee table, browsers do not always cope gracefully with a big screen, and guests can find a full desktop bewildering. LinuxTV smooths all of that into a pick-an-app-and-go routine, which makes it a natural fit for home theatre PCs, family TV computers, streaming setups, media kiosks and the occasional bedroom or lounge-room Linux box.
There is an environmental angle too. The project's SourceForge page pitches LinuxTV as a way of giving outdated laptops and desktops a useful second life, reducing e-waste along the way, and it is keen to stress that you are not tied to any particular app store or ecosystem. Add what you like, watch what you like: your setup, your rules.
Under the hood, DistroWatch classifies LinuxTV as an x86_64 live-medium and multimedia distribution of Indian origin, based on Debian Stable. The project's ISO builder notes identify the base as Debian 13 "Trixie", while DistroWatch's package list shows Linux kernel 6.12.107, systemd 257.13, the ext4 file system and the familiar apt and deb tooling. The default desktop is Openbox, a lightweight window manager, with Brave as the default browser, although the launcher is what you will spend nearly all of your time looking at.
LinuxTV is also very new. Its SourceForge project was registered on 7 April 2026, the privacy policy for its Android remote is dated just two days earlier, and DistroWatch lists its status as active. It is sensible to expect rapid change.
Inside the Toolkit
The launcher is a Qt Quick interface hosted by PySide6 or PyQt5, and it is built for the ten-foot view. Tiles sit in rows labelled Favourites, Apps and Streaming, with room for custom categories. Each tile is tinted with the dominant colour of its icon, and its name fades in when it receives focus. A search pill lives in the top bar, and long-pressing Enter, pressing the remote's Menu action or right-clicking a tile opens a context menu for favouriting, reordering, editing or removing it. The gear icon opens a settings panel covering network, Bluetooth, sound, brightness, remote login, auto-open, updates, and restart or shutdown. There is even a reduced-effects switch that drops the focus zoom, glow and ambient backdrop on weaker graphics hardware. By default it decides for itself, which is a considerate touch for the very machines this project hopes to rescue.
Everything is driven by a simple config.yaml file, with one list for native apps and another for web apps, each entry carrying a name, a command or web address, and an optional icon. The launcher checks which native apps are genuinely installed and hides the rest, while web services open through the system browser in kiosk mode, using a Chromium-family browser in app mode where available or Firefox in kiosk mode. When you close an app, focus drops neatly back onto the tile you launched.
On the software front, the ISO builder's notes name Kodi, Stremio, VLC and Brave as pre-installed. DistroWatch's description and the project's sample configuration go further, adding Proton VPN, the Kitty terminal, the qBittorrent client and a file manager. Because the launcher hides anything that is missing, the exact line-up you see may differ from build to build.
Streaming shortcuts make up the other half of the home screen. SourceForge highlights YouTube, Netflix, Disney+ and Spotify, while the sample configuration also lists YouTube Music, Prime Video, Hotstar, Apple TV+, HBO Max, Hulu, Peacock, Paramount+, Twitch, Crunchyroll, Sony LIV, ZEE5, SunNXT and YuppTV. These are shortcuts to each service's own website, so you will need your own accounts or subscriptions where required, and availability varies by region. Anything that is not there can be added yourself.
The real star, though, is the phone remote. LinuxTV Remote is an Android app, built with Expo according to the repository, that talks to the launcher over a WebSocket on port 8765 across your local network.
It offers a directional pad with OK, Back, Home, Menu, Play/Pause and Close App buttons, a touchpad mode for moving the cursor, a keyboard mode for typing, long-press support for faster directional navigation, and Shutdown and Reboot commands that ask for confirmation first. You can sign in with a username and password of at least eight characters set on the TV, or pair using a six-digit code shown on the Remote Control screen, and the app keeps your credentials in secure storage on the phone. Its privacy policy states that no account is needed and that it does not collect IP addresses or connection logs. Because the launcher listens on all network interfaces, some sensible housekeeping applies: set a proper password and keep the box on a trusted home network.
For tinkerers, the repository also holds the ISO builder, a Dockerfile with a compose file, a test suite and GitHub Actions workflows, so the whole thing can be inspected, rebuilt and extended.
Getting Started
The GitHub releases page offers everything you need: the LinuxTV ISO with its SHA-256 checksum file, the small LinuxTV Flash Tool archive, and the LinuxTV Remote APK. SourceForge also hosts the ISO. The image weighs in at roughly 1.3 to 1.4 GB, depending on which listing you consult, and it is worth verifying the checksum before writing anything to a drive.
The official Flash Tool works on Windows, macOS and Linux. Extract the archive, run the script for your operating system, browse to the ISO, choose your USB drive and click the flash button; the process takes roughly five to fifteen minutes. Windows needs Python 3 installed with the PATH option ticked, and Linux needs python3 and python3-tk. The tool also sets aside a persistence partition, which LinuxTV formats on first boot so that your files and settings survive restarts. Flashing overwrites the stick, so back up anything precious first, and expect one automatic restart during that first boot with the USB drive left plugged in.
Next, make the stick your first boot device in the UEFI or BIOS settings; the image supports both UEFI and Legacy BIOS. If the drive fails to appear, the project's guide suggests disabling Secure Boot and Fast Boot, trying a different USB port or drive, or rewriting the image. The boot menu is hidden for speed, but pressing Esc or Shift reveals GRUB with three choices: live with persistence (the default), live without persistence, and a fail-safe mode for older hardware.
The very first session needs a USB keyboard and mouse, because your phone cannot steer the TV until the two have been introduced. Connect to Wi-Fi under Settings, then Network (skip this on a wired connection), note the IP address in the top bar and enter it in the Remote app on the same network. Set your remote credentials under Settings, then Remote Control, or use the pairing code instead. After that, the keyboard and mouse can go back in the drawer. The system signs in automatically as a user called linuxtv.
A quick word on installation. SourceForge's pitch is "no install needed" and DistroWatch lists no installation method, yet the ISO builder's notes describe an Install LinuxTV entry that uses the Debian Installer. The live USB is clearly the primary, documented route, so check the boot menu of your own build if you would like to go further. Those who prefer to build the image themselves will need a Debian or Ubuntu host, root access and about 10 GB of free space, then run the build script in the iso-builder folder and test the result in QEMU before flashing it.
A final note on versions. LinuxTV does not use numbered releases. GitHub publishes a single rolling "Latest build" tag that its automation refreshes, and at the time of writing the release page showed 26 September 2026. DistroWatch, by contrast, lists a fixed-release entry dated 15 October 2026 (20261015), although its screenshot caption refers to a build from 29 September, and SourceForge showed an update only hours old. Treat all three as snapshots of a moving target and check the official pages for the newest build.
LinuxTV will not replace a polished commercial streaming box overnight, and it is certainly early days, but the idea behind it is a lovely one: take hardware that might otherwise end up in landfill, give it a TV-shaped brain, and hand the controls to the phone already in your pocket. With a documented flashing tool, a configurable launcher and an open repository to explore, it makes an inviting weekend project for anyone with a spare PC and a screen.
Disclaimer: All trade names, logos and trademarks mentioned here, including Linux, Debian, Kodi, Stremio, VLC, Brave, Proton VPN, Android and the streaming services named, belong to their respective owners and are used for identification only, with no affiliation implied. The Distrowrite Project aims for accuracy using official sources, but software changes quickly, so please verify details with the official project pages. Please use open-source software responsibly and legally, and only access content you are entitled to enjoy.
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