this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
794 points (100.0% liked)

Selfhosted

46677 readers
717 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

after almost 15yrs my plex server is no more. jellyfin behind nginx with authentik is running very nicely.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Could you point me to a good tutorial for hosting Minecraft server for my kids?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

Wouldn’t containers make more sense for some of these rather than full blown VMs?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

Right? Jellyfin is awesome

[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Plex still good for the boys that bought the lifetime pass. I understand why people would change. But it's still the best plug and play option. Waiting until they break the "lifetime" thing and fuck us over.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Didn't that already happen? Or am I misremembering?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Mostly not yet. They did restrict the bandwidth on relay, but anyone with half a brain can open a port and that still allows apps to direct connect without relay. Honestly I wish could just force it to never relay since randomly my iPad will use relay even when I’m on the same network but that’s more because the new iOS app since the rewrite is dogshit.

Lifetime pass since 2012 here.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 116 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Welcome to the jelly. ONE OF US. ONE OF US.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Gooble gobble

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

It is the command line interface for libvirt/qemu/kvm on Linux. I usually just use virt-manager remotely via SSH to create and manage my VMs, but virsh can be handy as well.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

command-line virtual machine manager

[–] [email protected] 71 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (9 children)

I've been using jellyfin for years.

My best recommendation is DELAY UPDATES and back up before you update.

I have a history of updates breaking everything so you should be careful about them.

All software recommends backing up before an update, but for jellyfin the shit is real, you really want to back up.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Updating immich brings excitement into my life :)

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

I have Jellyfin running for years too and it has never broken for me, I use Linuxserver image, so maybe they delay the updates a bit?... Now, Immich has broken so many times that nowadays is the only docker I don't keep at latest (and I know using latest is a bad practice, I understand the reasons, but the convenience of not worrying about the versions beats all that for me)

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I've been using jelly since just after the emby fork and never had an update issue on docker. Automatic snapshots every 5 mins (amoung other backup tools). means I don't need to worry much if it does.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago

Jellyfin still so buggy though. The UI is garbage too. I want to love it... I run both lol.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 days ago (9 children)

I just wanna get rid of Plex so bad but jellyfin isn't going to work for my grandma....

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

The people asking why confuse me...y'all acting like jellyfin is easy to use on an off-site tv when it's literally not for non tech savvy people. I don't understand why jellyfin just doesn't nut up and make an samsung tv client or something?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My 67 year old Mother has been using Jellyfin for years via Chromecast. Change the TV input to Chromecast and pull up the Jellyfin app. And that's it. She never leaves Jellyfin and the Chromecast is never shut off, even if the TV is.

It's amazing to me that you fanboys pretend like Plex is easy to use but Jellyfin is somehow not. It's generally the exact same interface.

I don’t understand why jellyfin just doesn’t nut up and make an samsung tv client or something?

Because application development is expensive, and they're open source--not funded by corporate interest like Plex. What exactly about that is difficult to understand?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Lol bad day huh

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If your grandma can handle torrenting over VPN, then she can probably handle Jellyfin.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Grandma probably doesn’t do the actually torrenting herself, chances are OP has a overseerr or jellyseerr type of setup, grandma makes the request and things just flow.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

You can run them concurrently and let grandma continue to use plex.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

if my parents can navigate it your grandma can :)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Host both. Keep plex up for your gma, Jellyfin for everyone else. Tbh Jellyfin is also pretty intuitive. Currently I'm hosting both, but my gma doesn't use it, so I'll probably move completely to Jellyfin.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Why? It's been much easier for me

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 53 points 3 days ago (2 children)

i love jellyfin i just wish there was a nicer way to highlight collections so you could make themed weekly or monthly collections of movies and shows that also still show up in the regular folders.... almost like netflix.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago

That is coming, I saw a PR for that. Just need to be patient.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I am still using Kodi. It is feeling a bit long in the tooth in current year, but I can’t complain. I tried Plex because chromecasting is a feature I would love. Sadly it didn’t support the ISOs of my 1:1 rips. Maybe it does now (I stopped waiting for them years ago). As for Jellyfin, they seem to have an anti-ISO stance. One of the devs seemingly (or someone claiming to be a contributor) said I should convert all my media to a more modern format and make my own menus because it would be fun. Oh well, Kodi it is.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago (2 children)

i've never heard of anyone that keeps dvd menus around. like, i get it for archival purposes but i would never want to actually navigate a menu when i want to watch something. in my mind it's like sitting through the commercials on a rented vhs. i would probably store a converted copy as well, in a format that would let me specify from the application what track and subtitle i want so i can set a default.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Blu-ray menus do kind of suck, but they are still mostly good enough to make all the supplemental material accessible (assuming the studio bothered to provide any anymore). But DVD menus (at least during that earlier golden age) add a layer to the experience I never knew I had been missing.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show has some dancing fishnet legs and sexyhorror lips dancing around. You get to see so many extras and choose two versions of the movie and AND a secret Easter egg third version. A smorgasbord. Same for Terminator 2: two good versions of the movie and that lame Star Trek-ish ending one was hidden and I love having the option to not watch it. Plus many more. Fight Club is the only one I can think of to make use of that camera angle swapping button. The DVD versions of Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace wouldn’t work any other way.

Perfect way to kill time when others go for a last minute toilet visit or decide to make popcorn. I am not going to the trouble of transcoding my entire library to get less.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

maybe it's because i grew up with vhs first but dvd always felt like a lot of hassle compared to just "put it in and watch"

[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 days ago (7 children)

I'm also 90% done migrating to jellyfin. I've had the instance running for 6 months now, the cultural change to watch jellyfin is complete, except for my wife's iPad.

Heck, I should just retire Plex. That will force the change.

These are the thoughts of a cold and calloused sysadmin. Didn't get the email about the change? Too bad.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 days ago

yeah it took me about 6 months with jellyfin to feel like i was ready to finally kill plex. the thing that finally did it was getting an email from plex asking if i'd like to check out whats streaming on hbomax.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 days ago (15 children)

I've heard jellyfin has a lot of security issues, which I don't know if that's accurate or not. But the BIGGEST issue is lack of a proper tvOS app. I really don't feel like using Infuse or some other app just to use my library. Year after year I hear about people switching and yet, the gap is simply still there.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago (4 children)

I’ve heard jellyfin has a lot of security issues

The biggest known stuff I saw on their GitHub is that a number of the exposed service URLs under the hood don't require auth. So, it's open-source with known requirements, you can tell easily from the outside that it's running, and you can cause it to activate a LOT of packages without logging in. That's a zero-day in any package that can be passed a payload away from disaster.

AS far as TVOS, I'm kinda surprised swiftfin doesn't service you.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah… that’s a non-starter for me. Not gonna risk my entire home lab when Plex doesn’t have any of that risk.

Also, running in Docker is fantastic but I’ve found Docker to be unstable at times depending on the version.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh, Plex has the risk. A vulnerability in Plex is how LastPass lost all their source code. A vulnerability in Tautulli which he had ported outside surfaced his auth token, then he was able to use the auth token to get into Plex and they were able to hit an rce vulnerability and pull the entire git repo the guy had locally.

The key difference is Plex at least has a security team and their name on the line with their investors.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

That’s completely different. Every internet connected service has risks, but having known vulnerabilities that you just refuse to fix is different to someone figuring out a complex exploit.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (14 replies)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago (14 children)

Unrelated but why a full VM for Linux stuff, lxc is much more efficient

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 days ago (3 children)

honestly every explanation probably just ends at 'this is what i learned on and it works'. same way i religiously use nano and try to do everything in bash first. or how a couple coworkers can't stop explaining their vim workflow and defending python unprompted like it's a trauma response for them. my current homelab is also running a r9 with 64gb ram and 30tb storage. if i were paying for remote hosting, still using salvaged hardware or being paid, i'd invest time learning newer processes. but containers haven't caught my interested and this set up takes basically no effort on my part to maintain, so i can focus my limited free time elsewhere.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

honestly every explanation probably just ends at 'this is what i learned on and it works'.

Yeah, lots of these answers basically boil down to “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (13 replies)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Does jellyfin do untranscoded video/audio?

Haven't used it in years but finally building up my media server again and I remember it had some funky settings for hardware encoding back then which I didn't need because I was connecting to it via a repurposed gaming laptop that could easily handle 4k content and surround sound by itself.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 days ago

I use jellyfin for unencoded audio and video on my clients that support it like my newer television, but I also use transcoded audio video on things that can't handle the higher codecs like the raspberry pi.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (7 children)

I want to leave too, but I really like PlexAmp for my music streaming. And no, Finamp doesn't work nearly as well or look as nice.

load more comments (7 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›