I used Plex for my home media for almost a year, then it stopped playing nice for reasons I gave up on diagnosing. While looking at alternatives, I found Jellyfin which is much more responsive, IMO, and the UI is much nicer as well.
It gets relegated to playing Fraggle Rock and Bluey on repeat for my kiddo these days, but I am absolutely in love with the software.
What are some other FOSS gems that are a better experience UX/UI-wise than their proprietary counterparts?
EDIT: Autocorrect turned something into “smaller” instead of what I meant it to be when I wrote this post, and I can’t remember what I meant for it to say so it got axed instead.
Jellyfin can’t utilize local network storage… How is that a useful tool for a HOME MEDIA SERVER???It looks as though there are methods for utilizing network storage solutions. This has not always been the case with Jellyfin but either way I was dead wrong. My bad folks.
What os are you running? My jellyfin server runs on linux and I just permanently mounted the directory from my NAS that holds all of my media. There’s some resources online for learning how to set up mounts over the network on startup, and as long as you can reserve their local ip it should work just fine.
Oh, interesting, thanks! I’ve dabbled with Linux so I’m familiar with it. I believe my nas is NTFS, but I could be wrong. But if so, I wonder if it’s possible to mount an NTFS location to a Linux server… Something to research while working tomorrow 😄
Thats definitely possible. Im using nfs because it so much faster in my experience. Just one line in the fstab. Nothing every software should implement themselfs imo.
You can definitely mount a windows share on a linux machine. I was doing it at my last job, because it allows you to do anything on it transparently as if its part of the local filesystem.
Here instructions from the Ubuntu wiki, most things should carry over to most other distros.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MountWindowsSharesPermanently
You can’t mount NFS on it?
Local resources only, and they even have a FAQ that confirms that they have no intention of supporting media libraries on network locations. So dumb. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to ditch Plex. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
? I serve media from… the server. All my storage is on the PC running Jellyfin. It’s movie and TV shows, not home videos of my family and photos of my pets. I keep those on my phone. 😉
You know how I already knew this? Because that’s literally the only use case that Jellyfin supports. Got several TBs on a NAS? Lots of people do. Jellyfin apparently can’t even conceive of such a diabolical topology.
https://www.xda-developers.com/how-install-jellyfin-nas/
Why wouldn’t you want your home media server software running on the server that’s in charge of storing your media?
EDIT: I apologize, I’m not trying to patronize you or be argumentative, I’m just trying to understand your setup. So you have a PC (NAS) where all your files are stored, a second PC running your home media server software that needs to talk to the first PC and see what’s stored on it so it can then serve that content to clients on your local network, like a TV? Instead of just running the server software on the first PC to begin with?
There are many reasons to do so, such as wanting to use GPU acceleration or a better CPU than what your NAS or SAN has to offer.
I’m afraid I’m not familiar with CPJ. For GPU acceleration, why wouldn’t you add a dGPU to your server? Or are you talking exclusively pre-built NAS solutions that don’t have a dGPU option?
I have this setup just because I didn’t want to bother changing the OS the NAS came with, but their software center doesn’t offer jellyfin. I found it easy enough to mount the media drive to the server, though.
I mean, it’s a NAS. Yes, it’s technically a “computer” but so is your TI86 (I wouldn’t call it a PC, it’s not exactly running minesweeper lol). My NAS is not optimized to run media center streaming services. My media center server, however, is. My media server is great at that, but you what it really sucks at? Also handling multiple TBs of file storage. Yes, an all in one network service machine would be great, alas, I don’t have optiplexes abound. I have a metaphorical web of multiple devices that all do different things. You know, like a network.
Why not? Mine does
Emby is just straight up better. I know people hold a grudge, but honestly it’s a fair price for a lifetime membership, the development is super polished and the product is way more capable.
We are here to talk about FOSS, not proprietary closed source non-free products
Okay. Then you can skip past my comment.
I’m free to share my opinion, thanks.
Of course you can share your opinion but it’s not relevant in the current context. That’s what’s been criticised.
Sorry sir, didn’t realize you follow such a tight ship here. You should punish yourself for posting that reply to me, as it’s not a discussion about FOSS
I tried Emby before Jellyfin and found it too absurd to pay for serving media that I own from a server that I own.
I don’t think it’s absurd to pay for a developer’s time.