this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2025
60 points (96.9% liked)

Linux

58604 readers
1272 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Hi, all. So I want to set up a media server using my Raspberry Pi. It will be used by me and my partner, who is very much tech illiterate. She knows how to use Plex, but I'm tempted by the open nature of Jellyfin. How steep is the learning curve there? Should I just go with Plex and keep it simple? Or is Jellyfin manageable if I set it up for her?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] otter@lemmy.ca 30 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I haven't heard of any learning curve with Jellyfin. It seems easy to set up, and the apps are about as user friendly as you can get (especially the third party ones)

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Only learning curve is naming. Jellyfin seems less forgiving about filenames and folder structure than Plex was.

[–] BremboTheFourth@piefed.ca 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

On the other hand, jellyfin's identify feature works better than plex's did for me, and it lets you rename stuff very easily whereas Plex needed you to find the exact piece of media in a database.

My mom asked me to rip a set of weirdo bootleg tai chi DVDs years ago, back when I used Plex, but I couldn't figure out how to get them to show up in the library because, again, weirdo bootleg media and I have no idea where she got them. But I switched to jellyfin last year and on a whim decided to mess with them, and getting them to show up in my jellyfin library was basically automatic

Edit, another fun example of fucking with Plex's identify feature just came to mind. For some reason it kept deciding that random movies were actually some movie named "A Fish Called Wanda." I'd never heard of it before, the movies it would misidentify were entirely random as far as I could tell, and no amount of fuckery would get it to identify the movie correctly. It would decide that, say, The Matrix was actually AFCW, I'd remove the files for The Matrix, and it would decide something else was AFCW. Eventually I got fed up and downloaded an actual copy of AFCW, but it still refused to play the correct files if I navigated to AFCW in my library. Never did figure that one out.

[–] boomzilla@programming.dev 5 points 1 week ago

You should definitely watch "A Fish Called Wanda" though. It's a classic.

[–] Fisch@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Speaking of third party apps, here's some recommendations:

Android: Findroid
Works absolutely great, it's very rare that I even find a bug.

iOS: Swiftfin
I don't use iOS but this is the one I installed on my friend's phones.

Linux (and maybe Windows): Delfin
This is a GTK 4 app for Linux and maybe it has a Windows build too but I didn't check. It's not perfect, there's bugs here and there but it mostly works fine. The developer isn't very active (which is understandable), so it would be nice if someone, who has the time for it, would help out.

Here's also the official page with Jellyfin clients: https://jellyfin.org/downloads/clients/all
It doesn't seem to include Delfin though.

[–] Profligate_Parasite@lemmy.today 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Finamp was pretty good, but offline mode and playback had some quirks/struggles for me. Maybe its cuz im on graphineOS. The true winner for me on my pixel8 is symphonium. Its a one time purchase, with a free mode... absolute knockout. Zero bugs, great, easy UI, smart playlists, scrobble integration for discovery, etc etc etcccc

[–] Fisch@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 days ago

But those are just for music, that's why I didn't list them. I assume most people use Jellyfin (or Plex) for video content.

[–] Teppichbrand@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago

Why should I download an app instead of using the web interface?