Selfhosted
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.
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I'm surprised by the resistance to Jellyfin in this thread. If you are using Plex, you're already savvy enough to use bittorrent and probably the *arrs. If you can configure that stuff, Jellyfin is absolutely something you can handle. If you like Docker, there's good projects out there. If you're like me and you don't understand Docker, use Swizzin community edition. If you can install Ubuntu or Debian, and run the Swizzin script, you're in business.
I think I represent a huge portion of Plex users; I am tech savvy enough to follow a simple walkthrough on YouTube to get my server setup. But the arrs, jellyfin, and docker both look like graduate level chemistry to me.
Plex has been around for ages and they have put money into making things easier for users like me to understand with events such as Pro Week and directly paying content creators to dumb things down for me.
I've got to admit that I've never used Plex (I'm a cantankerous open software fanatic), but how do you get your media on there? You're hosting your own server so presumably you're downloading the media somehow. Are you doing it manually? If so, you can do the same with Jellyfin. Is it automated with some tool built into Plex?
It's quite easy without docker to get lots of it running with a dietpi install. Runs on rpi and alike, but also on any "normal" old low end pc. Just select jellyfin, arrs, ... It handles it all for you, no need to learn Docker (I know people will argue about the advantages of docker, which are valid points, but ease of installation is more important to many people). The only difficulty remains the streaming outside your own LAN (because it's risky). VPN, tailscale, ... there's options but it always keeps on feeling risky to open up outside LAN. Local setup for jellyfin can be really really easy tho, if it's just for yourself and you mostly watch at home anyway... And in some jellyfin compatible app like Finamp and Streamyfin you can just download a few music albums, episodes or movies to your phone before you travel...
The big thing for me with plex is user management. I am absolutely knowledgeable enough to set up jellyfin, but i dont want to deal with user management. Plex makes it easy, i tell them to make their own account and i just share my library. i dont have to reset passwords, they can do that themselves. However, it’s getting to the point where i will probably just switch to jellyfin and deal with it because of how bad plex is getting.
I'm only sharing access with a few friends and family, so I don't find it cumbersome. Usually I make their account using the Jellyfin app on my phone. I do sympathize with not wanting to do support, which is the main reason I don't even ask for help with the hosting costs. I don't want to feel any obligation.
Plex is trivial to set up, most plex users I know actually don’t even use the arrs. They just host a drive someone gave them or they have an account already to access other people’s servers. Anyone can do it with a short list of instructions in minutes that mostly consist of “download app, make account, point to your media.”
I just setup jellyfin and it totally is the same. Install. Point it to a media folder. Setup port forwarding.
You don’t need to manually setup port forwarding with plex and if you want access outside of your home or to let others in it gets way more complicated with Jellyfin. Plex is turnkey in comparison.
That ease of outside LAN access poses a big risk tho. Plex can and eventually probably will share, be forced to share, get hacked etc Those cloud accounts imply the possibility of very detailed reports about who's streaming what, when, where, from which source...
If you are someone on this community or is just generally tech savvy enough to host Jellyfin you should. I don’t advocate for plex for people who don’t need it. But a lot of people are not knowledgeable enough for Jellyfin or are just nervous about it
But let's be honest - it really is not complicated. That was a one minute configuration in my router.
I consider myself pretty tech savvy but after I got Jellyfin set up I accidentally broke it within weeks, I wasn’t even able to get it consistently playing outside of my home network to my devices. Some ISP’s also make it hard to tinker with their modems/routers, and let’s not forget that most people when they set up their Internet just use whatever the ISP provides for them.
Ok, that is a totally different use case than mine. I'm one of those guys browsing a selfhosting community on the fediverse and I only want to stream my own stuff to my mobile and provide my wife with audiobooks. If you're providing a bigger group of people with streaming services, who are not tech savvy, another software might be the better solution. But that doesn't mean that Jellyfin is bad - it's just another use case with different requirements
I don’t think I called Jellyfin bad or anything like bad in a single comment I wrote
One minute for you and me, but that sort of thing just isn't feasible for many even if they have someone walking them through it over the phone.
Me too. Docker isn't hard if you use a compose file. It's easy to read syntax.
Linux server.io has great documentation for their images.
I have Jellyfin and Plex running from the same virtual machine pointing at the same media. If it wasn't for the one crappy TV I have in my house with no Jellyfin client, Plex would be gone.
This is giving me "yaml isn't hard to use if you use a compose file!" It is, actually. It's easy for you because you understand the technology. The vast majority of people do not.
Of course. But if you managed to setup Plex then you've already shown you have willing to learn...