list of installed plugins.

Yeah, as you said, that’s a pretty serious security issue. That’s a data leak that explicitly lays out the shape of your attack surface. It tells the attacker exactly what additional software your server is running and if any of it includes known vulnerabilities, the attacker now knows how to gain access.

This is a big part of the problem. You can use Plex on PlayStation, xbox, Roku, apple tv, iPhone, android, etc…

The apps are ubiquitous, the coverage is complete. In just about any situation, Plex is a workable option.

Do you know how to rebuild your car’s engine?

Do you know how to remediate black mold spreading on the walls of a houseboat?

Do you know how to compile Linux to run on some custom arm hardware?

Do you know how to repair or rebuild a crumbling stone retaining wall?

There’s a good chance you may not know how to accomplish all of those tasks. There’s also a very good chance you may not care about knowing how to accomplish all of those tasks, as some of them may not be relevant to you. This is ok.

Finally, I know you’re posting on the Internet, but you don’t have to be an asshole, that’s a choice.

It does not, not at all.

I think I’m going to have a harder time fitting a threadripper in my 10 inch rack than I am getting any GPU in there.

Well, you could always use a closed loop CPU cooler. (Not necessarily that one)

With the radiator hanging out in back, this shouldn’t need much height.

Wow, I have literally never heard that version of the story.

Really you don’t want hackers using your random Internet appliance as a point of attack to access your whole network.

More IoT devices means a greater attack surface. And it’s an appliance you don’t actually want to spend time thinking about. You don’t want to waste time troubleshooting network issues with your dehumidifier… It just needs to work, or you use a different one.

I’ll switch to jellyfin as soon as it works nearly as well.

But for the moment it’s missing a lot of features compared to Plex.

I just looked up jfa-go, I’m not at all opposed to trying things if they’ll work.

It seems like jfa-go is a user account management system, which is indeed super useful. But it doesn’t handle the remote content part. I’m still not going to create a VPN to share content.

Meh, seems like a sensible take. Certainly better for your mental health.

Communities matter. There’s a reason I’m not on X, there’s a reason I don’t play pubg or overwatch, toxic communities can seriously make any experience suck.

It’s plain deceitful to say jellyfin is simply better. It’s simply less capable and less supported. I don’t know if you’re trying to deceive others or just yourself.

Here’s the difference: With Plex it’s trivial to invite other people to watch content from your server, they can view it on just about any device they have and it doesn’t take any complicated networking setup to achieve. Likewise, just as you share your server, you can view content from other people’s servers through the same interface. This is not a small feature it’s the primary feature of Plex, it’s what sets it apart from xbmc or any media center software.

I am totally on board with FOSS and I would absolutely use jellyfin in a second if it could do the things that Plex does. But it can’t.

As a side note, this new interface for Plex on mobile is absolute shit, a big step backwards. If I had my way I’d still be using the Plex app from 2016.

The real problem with Plex is that it’s a whole package, server and client. If it were instead a server and an open protocol, that anyone could make a client for, that would be vastly superior. I desperately want to use a more customizable 3rd party client with my Plex server.

I’m a big fan of Vatta’s War, it was a breath of fresh air after reading a lot of David Weber. (Weber’s space battles are unmatched but his political views are so frustrating)

I’ll have to try the Vorkosigan Saga. Thanks!

Yeah! The wayfarer series is fabulous!

I took this exact route, I read murderbot diaries, then wayfarer, then l really struggled to find anything as good after that.

The single best hard scifi novel I’ve ever read was called “fallen dragon” by Peter F Hamilton. Without spoiling anything I’ll just say this, I’ve never seen a book so perfectly snatch up all its loose ends and tie them in a neat bow. It’s impressive.

If you’re into space battles, there’s the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell. And If you like the lost fleet, you’ll probably also enjoy the Temeraire series (not scifi, but fun). It’s literally Master and Commander with dragons, England vs France, trying to halt Napoleon’s steady advance and defeat the dragons of Napoleon’s formidable aerial core.

Gross

Quickly now, make jellyfin better!

That’s what you have to do for sharing!?

Someone definitely told me that there was library sharing for jellyfin… Is this the only option?

There’s a simple answer to that. When many people first got started with Plex, it was awesome! Way better than xbmc! Also, jellyfin didn’t exist.

Once you’ve had things up and running smoothly for years, changing everything is a hard sell. You could spend hours setting it up, fixing little inconsistencies, manually matching titles that had weird names, etc. or you could just… not.

I hope I’ve cleared things up for you! The answer is laziness!

Well my users are my family and close friends, so I just do care about them… Some of them use a smart TV app to access Plex, which is pretty convenient as it doesn’t even require additional devices or remote controls.

The fact is, as the family tech guy I spend a lot of my effort trying to make tech as easy to use for everyone as possible. And more than anything else, making things intuitive and simple is what eliminates the most amount of hassle for me.

I gotta be honest, when I look at the problem pragmatically, it’ll be a lot easier to pay $20 a year than to switch to jellyfin and get all my users to figure out how to install clients and make it work for them.

I’m already at the point in my life where my primary concern is making things work smoothly, and if I need to throw money at something to make it work smoothly, the choice is a no brainer. (At least for some values of “money”)

This may sound like a weird mention, but I really liked how cowboy bebop did that.

Yes, laser guns exist, but gunpowder firearms still work and lots of people still use them.

There are high tech space stations and hyperspace gates between planets… But you still take a simple gas powered ferry to cross a bay down on earth.

There are futuristic Martian cities with holographic advertisements that jump out at you, but Tijuana still looks like Tijuana.