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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after almost 15yrs my plex server is no more. jellyfin behind nginx with authentik is running very nicely.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Assuming this is all true, sure its not great but how much does it matter?
Most have jellyfin in a docker. My jellyfin can't only has read only accses to the media folder. Only the config folder has write access. Assuming the worst case scenario here, how much damage can than do?
A lot of neophyte self hosters Will try running the binary in Windows instead. Experienced self hosters will indeed use docker.
Then out of the ones that are using docker some of them will set it up as privileged.
And then how many of those people actually make read-only versus how many just add the path and don't think about it.
Don't confuse your good practices with what the average person will do.
swiftfin is mostly there but doesn’t support media segments, which is a deal breaker for me
really unfortunate since jellyfin media segments is a much better implementation of the concept than plex
i’m watching the swiftfin issue for when it gets added and i’ll be all over compiling and testing it
To be fair there is a tvOS app in development but progress is slow because the whole project is maintained by a small handful of volunteers. They’ve put out a call for help and the maintainers post updates here
I am also not up to date on Jellyfin security issues but the biggest one I care about is that its clients don’t support OIDC. There’s a neat plugin for OIDC, but without client support it only works with the web client and I’m not a fan of leaving login pages open to the internet.
if you use the oidc connection and apps that support quick connect you can do it. you basically end up doing things like the plex link process that got implemented when they forced everyone into their authentication service. i almost went that route but opted to leave the password auth from ldap in. its the kind of log in process most people are used too and i've got a few elderly users. i disabled password reset in authentik though and everyone gets a 3 word 24 char minimum password.
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.
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.
PlexAmp is so good. Nothing else comes close.
What about subsonic or funkwhale? I think I also tried a third one I'm forgetting
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try them out. One thing that I hate is critical for me is integration with Android auto. It's the last Google service I can't seem to quit. Might have to give up and just roll with Bluetooth instead.
symfonium has been mentioned in this post before specifically for android auto. i had the same hang up with apple car play. i didn't use most of the plexamp fancy features. i just wanted it to play music and be easy to use when driving. manet finally came along for ios. though i'm still hoping one of the open source apps adds the functionality later.
Unrelated but why a full VM for Linux stuff, lxc is much more efficient
I can backup an entire VM snapshot very quickly and then restore it in a matter of minutes. Everything from the system files, database, Jellyfin version and configs, etc. All easily backed up and restored in an easy to manage bundle.
A container is not as easy to manage in the same way.
VMs can also be live migrated to another server in the cluster with no downtime and backups don't need to take the VM down to do their thing. If in the future you want to move to physical hardware, you can use something like Clonezilla to back it up (not needed often, but still, something to consider).
Both have their places, but those factors are the main ones that come into play of when I want to use a VM or LXC.
Stronger compartmentalization
I just got Authentik / Traefik going for Navidrome, Jellyfin is next.
Does it play well for the mobile applications? If you use them?
the ldap auth works great for the apps. apps dont play well with an oidc login process. i ended up using both, oidc for web and ldap fall back for applications. made it easier for my non tech inclined users. most of the current apps also support quick connect, like the plex link process. you auth on a web browser and enter a code into the app. so it's possible to use only oidc for log in and, i believe it should be possible use css to even hide the user name and password fields.
Long time Jellyfin user here, welcome on board. I think biggest hurdle I should newbies warn about is the lack of availability on TizenOS.
Its possible but needs some extra steps.
i have a lifetime plex pass, but I'd consider moving to jellyfin when their closed-captioning support reaches parity with plex. i regularly spin up a jellyfin container to try it out, but i still run into issues. And jellyfin's android apps are mediocre (in particular android auto support), especially for music compared to plexamp
I find Jellyfin’s subtitle search much better than Plex’s. Bonus for leaving a subtitle file right along with your file, instead of buried somewhere else so you can’t easily edit it.
For some reason I get permission errors on jellyfin every time I use it. Never with Plex. I've gone through the steps to fix it before. But when you change your shit as much as I do. I just stay with Plex because it's plug and play. And I have the pass. I don't have the time to fuck with stupid shit with jellyfin.
my only issue is how user friendly it isn't compared to Plex.
i genuinely want to leave Plex (especially the more and more they enshittify) but I just could not figure out how to set up jellyfin. i use Linux every day, and know I'm at least a tiny bit more tech smart than your average PC user, but I can't imagine trying to explain to my family how to set jellyfin up.
Congrats. I'm super particular about covers and naming and the conversion of file names that Plex needed to jellyfin is intensive.
I finally got got JF up and running but still working on adding edition names to each item that is special. I really wish there was an editions field so it wasn't a manual title update. At least I can lock the field afterwards.
Long ago I ran a Windows Media Center PC in the living room and used the hell out of it. When WMC finally went EOL, I look for alternatives and found Plex. I never got around to setting up a Plex box, and now I see it too is ready for the scrap heap. I think this is what getting old is. You plan on doing something and never get around to it. Time passes much faster up here in age.