Don’t ever buy a “smart” TV. Buy the dumbest TV you can find with a good Display Port or HDMI and connect your NAS or Raspberry Pi or similar.

It’s not really though. This just describes installing Termux and some X11 gubbins to make it emulate a linux machine, but it’s still running some parasite-ridden Android OS. It would be much more interesting to get it running bare metal Linux with all the creepy “smart TV” baggage removed.

“Workstation” is a real stretch.

• The hardware in those things is underpowered to say the least.
• The way X11 is implemented there is no acceleration so that’s going to suck to use.
• The connectivity is atrocious. Maybe WiFi and Bluetooth if the package removals doesn’t wreck things and even then no guarantee you’ll be able to pair anything, and maybe one usable USB-A 2.0 port.

A fun project for sure, I’d have a blast doing something like this. But the expectation you’d have something actually useful afterward is not realistic. If you want a workstation you’re far better served by bolting a NUC-style computer to the back if the TV and using that.

Really interesting, but it shows you that it’s not gonna be tomorrow that my Philips smart TV is gonna become a Linux TV.

I already bricked it one when switching the base launcher and removing too many apps. After struggling to set it up perfectly to watch movies on LibreELEC in perfect conditions, I ain’t tinkering with it as long as it remains my only TV.

Maybe one day we’ll get Linux friendly smart TV and cars…