I set up a Linux pc to replace my smart TV and add some gaming capabilites. It took some time but I learned quite a lot (Thanks to Debian and Arch wikis). And I haven't missed any TV functionality.
The launcher is flex-launcher on a labwc environment/compositor on a Debian stable distro. (For testing and easy setup, I also did it on Ubuntu Gnome but I don't need a full DE in the background that I don't use. But it's adaptable to other distros and DEs.)
It's now fully usable with a gamepad including turning the TV on and off, so I have also fully replaced the TV remote.
I hope some people may find it interesting. It was also quite a lot of fun, actually.
I have a home theater PC and I was really interested in making it have a "TV interface", but it turns out just the standard dash to dock (on the left), gsconnect, with big scaling and big icons works just fine, if not better :)
I tried some of that too. But for most desktop environments, the gamepad wouldn't work.
But great that it works for you. Nice thing about Linux :)
Oh yeah, I don't play game on it, we only watches YouTube and movies.
So GSConnect actually is a way better experience than any controller in my use case :)