Linux

friends don't let friends use plex.

its paywalling yourself

Jellyfin all the way. But I wouldn't run it on a pi, I would look for something beefier.

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)

Plex vs Jellyfin is a lot like Windows vs Linux in my view.

There are things in Plex you can point to that you think keep you from moving. I point to things in Plex I am glad I left behind.

How steep is the learning curve there? Should I just go with Plex and keep it simple?

You've got it the wrong way round. Jellyfin is simple. I've never understood Plex.

Jellyfin is A-ok for the tech illiterate. I actually think it might be easier to navigate and use because it's a bit more simple than Plex.

The main difference between Plex and Jellyfin is the network setup. Plex takes care of that for you, while you have to set it up your self with Jellyfin. Another difference is that Plex can combine content from multiple servers ( I think. I'm not a plex user, so I don't know for sure), while it will always be seperate servers in jellyfin.

Jellyfin will always have my heart though, because it's open source and not here to make money. Plex also have a reputation to show ads and other stuff from streaming services.

For a perfect FOSS route? Jellyfin. It isn’t difficult to use at all for a normie — just select and play. Even my mom uses it.

But I wouldn’t put either on a raspberry Pi if you have media in formats like AV1 and/or in 4k and gonna play it on screens older than 5 years old. Transcoding will be extremely sluggish even on the newer Pis. Instead get a 11th gen (intel), ryzen 6000 (amd) cpus or newer OR rtx 40 series or newer GPU (dedicated gpu is faster with 4k). You can get powerful hardware if you plan to expand your self hosted stack.

I got a N100 mini PC with 16 GB RAM 6 months back thinking I will be running only Jellyfin, Vaultwarden, Nginx Proxy Manager, Pihole, arr stack and Firefly iii. Now I have Immich, Paperless-ngx, Yamtrack, Baikal, Authentik, Calibre Web — around 40 containers. So my RAM is at 70% usage at this point. I learnt my lesson that self-hosting is a rabbit hole and I should have gotten beefier hardware.

Jellyfin all day every day

It still has issues to fix but it's open source and actually yours

I'd recommend Jellyfin. Dead easy to use.

I have only recently started with self hosting and after some minor frustration, i am in love!!! Plex isnt just worse cuz its paywalling your own files, its install, support and ui are pretty trash, imo. The one advantage i saw was that it was easy to share w folks. If your jellyfin is going to be secure AND accessible, thats more work to do.

Keep in mind jellyfin does NOT recommend using a pi, bc it struggles w transcoding etc. That said, my first go was an rpi5. I used this guide and it was pretty brainless.... ezpz: Indian tech guru to the rescue!

Beware, uptime w the pi is pretty bad... had to restart server all the time, and some devices would not stream properly. It did work, mostly though, and it was a great intro for me since i just had it lying around.

Have fun!

Plex is an enterprise solution, if you need your tech illiterate grandma to access the media it's easier to pay them. If it's just a local network or you're okay with going down a rabbit hole of setup, then Jellyfin does everything and does it better IMO (Plex requires you to be online to login before it shows you your local data, plus you're sharing information on what media files you have to Plex).

I personally have been using Jellyfin for years, and my only complain is that the LG app is slow and I get some videos that stuck for a few seconds in it (probably some codec thing, that I could fix by transcoding the media but I haven't been bothered enough to figure it out)

I haven't really used Plex a whole lot but I have found Jellyfin from a user perspective to be extremely easy to use. The quick connect codes are one of my favorite features.

I wish I'd have gone with Jellyfin when I migrated from Plex. I'm on Emby, it has a few features that I like that are not available in Jellyfin.

Kinda hijacking this a little: what do the cool kids use on a "normal" TV as a client to watch Jellyfin?

Chromecast? A PI plugged into the HDMI port?

This hasn't been on my radar, but with Winter coming (John Snow) I'm thinking this might be something to look into...

neither, the raspberry pi doesn't have a gpu to deal with transcoding so it's gonna be frustrating when ur trynna watch or listen to anything (its gonna keep buffering). i highly recommend checking out your local auctions from big business or government that are giving away old mini computers and use that as a self-hosting measure instead (no more than 100$). raspberry pi is kind of a scam ngl since you can get much better hardware for cheaper, ur paying for a brand image

IDK about the RPi5 but earlier models don't do well with transcoding. You'll want to make sure to convert all of your videos to a format widely compatible with your clients. H264 is usually compatible with any device of the last 10ish years.

While jellyfin itself is very simple, you might run in to problems if you want to use it while not on your home network. For this you're either wanna use a VPN (or tailscale) or use something like nginx to give your server a web address, while you get this for free if you use plex.

Giving yourself a public address might be easier for the person trying to access jellyfin, but it it comes with a bunch of security considerations and you probably (definetly) want to do some research on the inns and outs of that. I would recommend tailscale but either way it's gonna be some extra fiddling, unless you already have something like that set up.