this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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after almost 15yrs my plex server is no more. jellyfin behind nginx with authentik is running very nicely.

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Yea, JF is getting mature enough for more people to transition.

I've been running it side by side with Plex for about 2 years now, and have a couple of clients (and all of my personal use) on JF, but a few users either cant run JF directly on their hardware (and don’t want to cast every time) or they are older and would struggle to learn a new app without some hands on practice with it.

The newest Plex UI update on some devices is causing some problems so I think I’ll have a few more users moving to JF in the near future.

It's a bit of a ram hog compared to plex but that's not a major issue.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 11 points 3 days ago

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

[–] Fingolfinz@lemmy.world 103 points 4 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 3 points 3 days ago

Gooble gobble

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[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 64 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 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.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 37 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] MvPts@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Updating immich brings excitement into my life :)

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[–] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 9 points 3 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)

[–] Lem453@lemmy.ca 15 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 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.

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[–] aeharding@vger.social 6 points 3 days ago

Right? Jellyfin is awesome

[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 45 points 4 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.

[–] cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 4 days ago

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

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[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 36 points 4 days ago (6 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.

[–] meh@piefed.blahaj.zone 25 points 4 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.

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[–] VitabytesDev@feddit.nl 8 points 3 days ago (2 children)
[–] gerowen@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days 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.

[–] RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com 6 points 3 days ago

command-line virtual machine manager

[–] Surp@lemmy.world 17 points 4 days ago (8 children)

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

[–] Joelk111@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 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.

[–] Surp@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 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?

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[–] sugarfoot00@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 days ago

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

[–] Bazoogle@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Why? It's been much easier for me

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

Grandma? Pls send money.

if my parents can navigate it your grandma can :)

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[–] macstainless@discuss.tchncs.de 22 points 4 days ago (13 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.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 13 points 4 days ago (6 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.

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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

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] JimVanDeventer@lemmy.world 11 points 3 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.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 15 points 3 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.

[–] JimVanDeventer@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago (1 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.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

i ripped all my dvds specifically to get rid of the menus because they were slow, hard to use, and full of frustrating animations. they usually just felt like an afterthought.

i've never been one to be swayed by extras, it usually just feels akin to jingling keys to get me to buy shit. maybe i'm weird.

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[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] lime@feddit.nu 10 points 3 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"

[–] Moonrise2473@feddit.it 12 points 4 days ago (3 children)

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

[–] meh@piefed.blahaj.zone 22 points 4 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.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 4 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.”

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[–] CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago (11 children)

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.

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[–] mlg@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago

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.

[–] The_Zen_Cow_Says_Mu 13 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

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

[–] TeamAssimilation 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] puppycat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 4 days ago (12 children)

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.

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[–] bitwolf@sh.itjust.works 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I just got Authentik / Traefik going for Navidrome, Jellyfin is next.

Does it play well for the mobile applications? If you use them?

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[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago

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.

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