i have a debian box with kde bigscreen and have been quite pleased. kodi with the jellyfin plugin worked ok, but i ran into some playback issues with select videos and ended up just using the jellyfin desktop app. apps in general kinda lack, but you can setup firefox/chromium "apps" for different streaming services and youtube.
This doesn't make sense to me. I have Ubuntu installed on a machine and have never even touched snaps. I did not have to do anything out of the box to not use snaps.
and I just figured out how to get eveopreview working.
ive been meaning to figure out a good setup with KDE activities that would work similarly. it would be nice to have always on window previews too.