You can do it with kde-plasma nogui like the steam deck
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Figuring out and emulating how the steam deck handles it is a great idea, I'll do some research.
Thanks for the info!
I did this in 2004 for public info stations at a university. My methods are extremely dated but I did a baseline Linux deployment (original Redhat 9 I think) with KDE desktop and had it boot to a single full screen kiosk mode Firefox (maybe it was Konqueror hard to tell). From there I had a website with a UI that supported easy use via touchscreen. The keyboard mappings were all disabled for KDE so everything had to be done via local or SSH terminal. Doesn’t work for you but it was a fun project. More of fun nostalgia for me.
I’m working on something similar right now, PXE or usb to load iPXE, that loads a custom Ubuntu LiveCD image which auto runs a bash script to configure a VPN, and add a software repository, which then downloads the software and runs it in Firefox in kiosk mode. No hard drive needed as it runs all in-memory.
Forget window managers and definitly avoid Electron if you can. Easiest way:
firefox --kiosk https://your-app-url
That still requires some level of graphical session though
I'm not sure I could make a transparent overlay on top of MPV with just a Firefox kiosk.
Also, I'm curious why I should avoid Electron? Do you have another framework to suggest that would let me do this?
I'm not against learning new things if they're more adequate for my project!
You might want to take a look at cage which has been designed for that.
I was looking at Cage yesterday, but it seems like it wouldn't support a transparent always on top application, in a way to give control to any application underneath. Maybe I could experiment with it and see what I can do...