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System

Desktop, theme and remote access

KDE Plasma 6, the steampunk theme, the system HUD, anti-suspend and remote access.

SkillFishOS uses KDE Plasma 6 as its desktop environment, dressed in a consistent steampunk theme and a set of tweaks specific to the BC-250.

Sessions

At login (handled by SDDM, with autologin) several sessions are available:

  • KDE Plasma X11 — default. Choosing X11 makes remote access trivial (see below);
  • KDE Plasma Wayland — selectable;
  • Gaming — a gamescope session in Big Picture style (see Gaming).

⚠️ Anti-suspend (critical)

The BC-250 has broken ACPI suspend: if it sleeps, it won’t wake up and needs a reset (see hardware). For this reason SkillFishOS permanently disables all sleep states:

systemctl mask sleep.target suspend.target hibernate.target hybrid-sleep.target

To this it adds a logind rule (IdleAction=ignore), automatic screen locking disabled and power management with “infinite” idle. It is a mandatory measure: a suspended machine is also unreachable remotely.

”SkillFish Steampunk” theme

The look is a coordinated brass/copper palette (accent #d8a849, dark surfaces) and consistent from boot to desktop: GRUB theme, Plymouth splash, SDDM greeter, fish-themed wallpaper. The theme package includes:

  • icons (SkillFishSteampunk, with breeze-dark as a fallback) and dedicated cursors;
  • a Kvantum style for Qt applications and a KDE color scheme;
  • a plasma theme, a Konsole theme, window buttons and a global look-and-feel (org.skillfish.steampunk);
  • themed user avatars and a selectable gallery.

The default Breeze themes stay installed as a load-bearing fallback (in particular they provide the logout/shutdown dialog). They must not be removed.

System HUD (Conky)

In the top-right corner there’s a brass-styled HUD built with Conky showing in real time: per-core CPU bars with MHz/°C/W, GPU MHz/temperature/VRAM, RAM, disk, fan and the connected Bluetooth devices with their battery level (gamepads, audio…). The values come from dedicated helpers that read the hardware sensors directly.

Remote access (x11vnc)

Because the default session is X11, remote access is simple: SkillFishOS starts x11vnc on the active display, sharing the real screen. On the LAN any VNC client can connect. This allows support and configuration from another PC without a physical keyboard/mouse on the board.

Network, audio and applications

  • Network: ethernet is managed by NetworkManager, so it’s visible and configurable from the Plasma GUI.
  • Audio: a full PipeWire stack (with Bluetooth support). Note: active DP→HDMI adapters can break the audio — see Troubleshooting.
  • Base apps: Dolphin file manager, Konsole terminal, Okular PDF viewer, Gwenview image viewer, Ark archiver, Spectacle screenshots, Discover store (with flatpak), Google Chrome browser, OnlyOffice.
  • Native SkillFishOS apps (grouped under the “SkillFishOS” menu, each installable/updatable as a .deb from the signed repo): Tuner (BC-250 overclock/undervolt/fan/CU control), AI (on-demand local LLM on the integrated GPU), Monitor (live temperature/frequency/voltage/fan charts), Kernel Manager (pick the boot kernel and uninstall old ones), ISO Mount and Hub — the Discover-style software centre (APT + Flatpak + Snap) with app pages, a screenshot carousel and software-source management.
  • Display: a daemon (skillfish-dp-hotswap) handles monitor detection, needed because the DisplayPort HPD is broken.

Sources