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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Some of it yes, the claim for example, but the rest is still pretty bad UX (and even that is stupid, I shouldn’t need a claim to watch locally), I’m an experienced self hosing person and I’m getting frustrated every step of the way, imagine someone who doesn’t know their way around docker or is not familiar with stuff… Jellyfin might be less polished as some claim, but setting it up is a breeze, never had to look at documentation to do it.



  • It’s curious that I’m almost in the opposite boat, have been using Jellyfin without issues for around 5 years, but recently was considering trying Plex because Jellyfin is becoming too slow on certain screens (probably because I have too much stuff, but it shouldn’t be this slow).

    Edit: this made me want to check in Plex, so I’ll leave my story for people amusement:

    My experience with Plex:

    • Write the docket compose
    • leave out the claim because it’s optional and I have no idea what it is
    • launch it
    • asks me to create an account
    • not really comfortable creating an external account to access my local server, but okay.
    • discovered I already had an account. Huh? I wonder why I don’t remember ever running Plex then.
    • login to that account
    • shows me a bunch of stuff
    • find it weird that it already scanned everything, especially because I didn’t pointed it to my media
    • proceed to try to watch something
    • can’t play due to DRM
    • WAT?
    • go back and discover there’s a bunch of content that’s not in my library
    • ok, so this must be some free content
    • how do I configure my local library?
    • spend 15 min navigating the UI trying to find it
    • open the docs, they say to click the settings icon
    • that icon is nowhere to be seen
    • click a similar one
    • can’t find anything the docs say I should
    • maybe I’m not on the right site? site is <IP>:<port>/web/yaddayaddayadda so it seems correct
    • try to go to <IP>:<port> get to the same page
    • look at the docs on how to access the web app says to go to <IP>:<port>/web
    • try that, get a message about not being authorized
    • WAT?
    • read some more docs discover I need that claim
    • spend some time trying to find that in the UI
    • google it up, find the link
    • go to that page, grab the claim, set it up on the server and restart the server
    • I’m able to get to the web app now
    • Do you want to access it from the internet? If this works it would be great, so yes!
    • setup my library
    • let it scan and try to watch something from it
    • UX sucks, video plays in a sort of popup in landscape on my phone.
    • Ah, dumb of me, I probably have my browser set to desktop mode
    • No, I don’t.
    • Ok, so the web is maybe only expected to be used on desktop, let me install the app
    • Install the app, login to my account, only have the Plex provided content
    • Look around trying to find the media I scanned, find a thing saying my server is disconnected
    • WAT?
    • Go back to the web app via IP, try to look into settings
    • “You are not connected directly to the server”
    • WAT?
    • everything else seems okay, I even enabled remote access there and it says it’s working
    • Every few minutes the page says my server is not available for a few seconds then comes back
    • It’s now been 1 hour and I haven’t been able to watch anything.

    It’s now been 1 hour of trying to set this up and I give up. Jellyfin is much more easy to setup, and even if Plex was instantaneous I could have loaded my TV library hundreds of times in the 1h I just wasted trying to get this to work. Probably every other time I tried I got similar results which is why I have an account there even though I don’t remember ever using Plex.

    Edit2: after some nore more fiddling managed to get it working, not sure what I changed, so now:

    • Open the app, see my content there
    • Try to watch something
    • “You’re watching in indirect mode, quality might be bad”
    • Ok, so it’s not connecting directly to my server, anyways, let’s ignore this for now, maybe it’s getting confused because it’s in a docker container
    • “Activate Plex”
    • Ah, ok, it’s the “pay or not now” screen, not now
    • No subtitles play
    • Try different subtitles
    • Still nothing
    • Plus quality seems shit
    • Confirmed, it’s reproducing at 720x300 even though it’s a 4K video
    • Look at docs, figure out the direct play is about converting the video
    • Select maximum quality which according to docs should use the original file
    • Still get a 300p video
    • Figure out maybe it’s the android app that’s the problem, go to the TV, install Plex and connect to it
    • Video takes forever to load
    • Give up again after a couple of minutes waiting for the movie to load












  • You’re focusing too much on the installation process, if installing Arch was the whole of the problem things like Endeavor would be a good recommendation for newbies, but they’re not. Arch has one giant flaw when it comes to being beginner friendly, and it’s part of what makes it desirable for lots of us, and that is the bleeding edge rolling release model. As a newcomer you probably want something that works and is stable. Arch is not, and will never be, that, because the core philosophy is to be bleeding edge rolling release. If you’re a newcomer who WANTS to have that and doesn’t mind the learning curve then go ahead, but Linux has enough of a learning curve already, so it’s better to get people started with something they can rely on and afterwards they can move to other stuff that might have different advantages/disadvantages.

    We’re talking about the general case here, I’ve recommend Arch to a newcomer in the past, he was very keen on learning and was happy with reading wikis to get there stuff sorted, but realistically most people who’re learning a whole new OS don’t want to ask questions and be told RTFM, and RTFM is core to the Arch philosophy.