My wife consumes whatever media I throw at our Plex server and I’d like to stick with it (The tv’s + set top boxes/remote controls are all easy for her to use and stream Plex fine)
I’d grabbed an old work PC I replaced years ago, Windows 10, and tossed a Plex server on it and it’s worked for a long time but recently despite being used for NOTHING but Plex, its bloated itself like most Windows machines and I found Cortana taking 90% CPU (despite being disabled via registry) and some updates failing over and over.
I’d like to replace it (the software) but really no idea where to start, even the most helpful sites are just “use your favorite Unix then install Plex” or “Here are 56 perfect versions of Unix to install for your Plex server”
Honestly I use it for nothing except Plex, is there something easy enough I could look at?
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If you’re only using it for Plex and nothing else, it probably won’t make a lot of difference which you use.
My old setup was Ubuntu running Plex as an install… if you just run a server without a gui, it’s like 3 lines to install Plex
I also have a pi as a portable setup running the docker version which works pretty well but I don’t think it will handle hardware encoding very well, but I could be wrong
Yeah Ubuntu came up in a few searches, I’ll read more about that, Desktop was 25gb which was a bit excessive given the age of the PC, will look at server, ty
Debian is another popular choice for servers (Ubuntu is based on Debian, with a few things bolted on top which are in my opinion not worth it). The default Debian installation only consumes 1-2GB disk space (just deselect any desktop environment during the installation process)
Minimised Ubuntu server I think only wants like 2.5gb of space and cuts out a lot of things you’ll never use
I’m in a very similar situation, too many windows services running in the background. Casaos is supposed to be a user friendly way to set up a bunch of docker containers on linux for Plex and the arrs amongst other things. I can’t speak for how easy it is as it’s something I’m going to be exploring in the coming weeks.
I run Plex on a Raspberry Pi 3, it can support two simultaneous 1080p Streams on my local Wifi. Cant support 2k or 4k videos at all. And cant support video outside of the local network.
“use your favorite Unix then install Plex” or “Here are 56 perfect versions of Unix to install for your Plex server”
What part of this do you think is hard?
Each step can be scary at first but its not hard if you break it into pieces.
Booting Ubuntu or some linux OS is a fun first step if you actually have a spare computer handy
What part of this do you think is hard?
Not hard… essentially worthless however…
The articles are saying “Here is a list of almost all known versions of Linux, these are good for you to use” when you query what the best option is… Hardly narrowing down anything. Likewise saying “Use your favorite… then install the product you want to use” is also useless information if you are asking the question I was… I have no favorite obviously since I know nothing about it… and OBVIOUSLY I am going to install the produce I just asked about installing…
The pages I was looking at answered the question “How do I install Linux?” by saying “First, Install Linux”
Not to say there aren’t better sources, but all the first ones I found where along that theme
Ah yeah, i know what you mean. That can be overwhelming. There are a loooooot of choices, and the differences might be things I’ve never even heard of before.
I think a lot of these articles are written with the expectation that you will try several different versions after you learn to flash/boot. I think i ended up with 4 different forks i could boot from.
When I started, i went with Ubuntu first just because it seemed pretty stable and had support from a large company, but once I leanred how to boot Ubuntu it was easy to do the same steps for the other versions to try them out.
I actually went back and had a look at a few of the top results and I have a feeling a lot were AI written Sandtraps. Several were very similar “Install your favorite Linux then <copy and paste from Plex web site on how to install Plex>”
Makes it had for a newbie who doesn’t know what they don’t know so can’t ask the right question.
The Mint install works fine now, I made a lot of mistakes and took a while to get head around the folder structure and permissions but once I am more comfortable next time I’ll try something a little more headless I think, though playing around I reckon I’d be happy with Mint as a daily machine (if only my job wasn’t coding Windows apps :/)
Thats great progress
I just got into self-hosting about a week ago and started by getting a small beelink s12 mini. Since you have an old pc you don’t need to worry about hardware for now.
To get going with the software I followed this (https://lemmy.world/post/6542476) lemmy post in the beginning. It took me a couple of evenings to understand some basic concepts and after getting everything going I found the recommdation for https://yams.media/. So I wiped everything (because I decided to not encrypt the system and to go with Ubuntu 22.04.03 LTS instead of 23.10) and was supprised how quickly I had yams running again.
So just follow the guide and ask here or on the yams discord if you have any questions during the installation.
Check the compatibility with Linux but I also used Ubuntu with very little problem. It works flawlessly for me. I had no experience with Linux before this and was able to set it up with some googling and Asking ChatGPT for some useful commands. It was a fun project. The *arr suite is great.
I case anyone is interested, I have Plex up and running now and wife is happy, some feedback on how it went
Why it went:
- I needed to install Plex specifically, because all the set-top boxes we use support plex but are fairly locked down. Wife likes their interface and remote control and doesn’t want to change (they are simple to use< Australia Telstra boxes, all free)
- I choose Mint, I thought I’d prefer a GUI to make the install easier and also wanted to see what Linux desktops were like these days
How it went
- Install was trivial when I chose “simple” - I tried advanced to format the two drives I had (which were messy with many partitions I wanted blown away), but when I tried one method it told me I had a Boot drive but no NIF or NEF drive (or something) in order to boot - when I told it to install that type (Found it in the list) it told me I had no boot drive now (Online help for Mint install on Mint web site was out of date and the GUI didn’t match what I saw - a common theme - so made it harder) - Gave up, choose SIMPLE. No idea what it installed but it worked
- Lot more raw command line that you’d expect from a GUI, In fact not sure the GUI does anything at all. I used the command line commands for almost the entire install
- The Networking failed and was as bad as Windows off the bat. HOWEVER fixing any networking issues was much easier than windows (I still have network issues in my windows machines from 5 years ago, never could fix them) but the two issues I had with Mint, (1) plex could not be seen (answer: ufw opened one port) and (2) Windows could not see and share a Mint drive (answer: Samba installed with one line and permission set on a folder) were fixed in a few minutes
- Man you can trash your OS with one command! Reinstalled once because I did a chown on the wrong folder and gave plex the sole ownership of the entire drive whereupon nothing ran anymore!
- Much faster, better software generally, the trans-coding for videos seems better, the speed of the desktop “server” is faster and Plex is madly playing everything nice and clearly with great response time.
- Stuff changes a LOT between versions apparently- many suggestions online failed for me because the suggested folders or files no longer existed or had been moved or changed. Likewise Mints own sites screen shots doesn’t match reality.
- People are confused a lot - One of the common issues is Plex cannot see the folders where your videos are, as Plex runs under its own user - The number of different methods people have used to get around this is outstanding! And every one is thumbed up as “the answer that solved my problems!” From changing the user Plex uses to root or other users that already have permissions, to adding plex ownership of folders or even changing permissions of the folders to either something safe, or just ROOT ROOT ROOT. It is hard to know what you should be doing (Even changing permissions there were apparently at many programs to use, not sure which was the right method… chown, setfacl, chmod (I know they are different, I glanced at the docs but with so much to learn it becomes a bit overwhelming and you just take the first suggestion and stick with it)
Edit: at any rate, works fine now ty all for suggestions. Now I am getting annoyed I don’t have ALL the services running on the server and am starting to see what else I can run and how… all without interrupting my wifes streaming of course!
I recently migrated my Plex server to a box running Proxmox with Plex in an LXC container. Very little resource overhead, and it’s been rock solid ever since. No ragrets.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters IP Internet Protocol LTS Long Term Support software version LXC Linux Containers Plex Brand of media server package
4 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
[Thread #426 for this sub, first seen 12th Jan 2024, 20:45] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Have you considered truenas scale? It’s debian based and there’s an official app for Plex. Not to mention a plethora of guides to get scale and Plex up and running.
