Others have already weighed in, but:

This warning doesn’t seem to be persistent. Using ublock/regularly clearing cookies seems to keep this at bay. Sometimes it helps to open new links in container tabs as well.

I got this earlier this week and clearing my cookies/using container tabs seems to reset it.

But crucially HA’s commercial branch WILL have a bunch of your data, including voice processing and login info, if you do buy into their paid subscription service.

• their background as a nonprofit was oriented toward data privacy and portability to begin with. Their privacy policy is about as protective as they come. Compared with plex…
• they have a paid service but they offer their base product as FOSS

It would be great if JF did something similar, but I think they don’t specifically because they’d be liable for their users illicit use of it. That’s basically the whole reason OSS streamers exist. Plex started out that way, but when they decided they wanted to compete with the big boys they were forced to lock it down more to protect themselves against legal challenges. That’s why I think you’re kidding yourself if you think it’s a long-term solution for streaming ripped media. That’ll only last until copyright owners decide to push plex to take action against it.

But if the goal is for FOSS to be mainstream and a primary choice (and it can absolutely be, there are plenty of examples), then it doesn’t matter what I think.

I don’t think that should be the goal - FOSS as a model will never outcompete for-profit corporate models. IMO the goal should be to encourage people to learn the minimal amount of tech self sufficiency so that they can choose FOSS when they need it, rather than pushing FOSS to become OSS, and then eventually just SAAS. Firefox is a good example of what can go wrong with chasing mainstream adoption. There’s a place for projects like Plex, but im pretty adamant that those should be halfway solutions more than end-goals. I’m fine with leaving that as a disagreement.

I’d drop Plex in a heartbeat if Jellyfin was just as good to use for me and the rest of my household. But it isn’t. There’s no reason to blow smoke for Plex, but there is a reason to not delusionally pretend that open source alterantives are better than they are.

Nobody is saying JF is easier to use than plex, we just prefer the flexibility and privacy and aren’t bothered or slowed down by the complexity. That’s fine. You just have different priorities than the rest of us. I’m glad there’s an option for you.

Yea, I don’t disagree, and I don’t actually fault anyone for using plex for it’s simplicity of remote configuration.

I do think a lot of people overlook simple workarounds to doing straight reverse proxies. I’ve used a VPN to access my remote services without issue for a long time. Granted, that’s still a prerequisite skill a lot of people don’t have, but I think a lot of people already inside the self-host space already have that knowledge. And frankly, self-hosting as a concept stems from this idea that with a little bit of effort, we can free ourselves from corporately owned SAAS companies - it shouldn’t be so divisive to be advocating for self-sufficiency.

There’s absolutely a place for plex. It’s a lot of people’s first foray into selfhosting. But I think people miss the opportunity to learn a new skill when they decide they’re willing to put up with abuse instead of taking the hint that it’s time to migrate.

Yea, they were extremely vague about what the nature of their problem was, but they mentioned it was running on the same media library as their plex install. They insisted that it was because jellyfin was poorly designed and definitely not user error. Could have been a bunch of things, but it was almost certainly a config error. They said the server ‘locked up’ and all the other services became unresponsive any time jellyfin was scanning. They also did not like the way jf wrote metadata files to the media library volume. It was among their other complaints, such as ‘i didn’t like that you could reskin it’ and ‘it was too complicated to use for managing my book collection’.

sounded like a usergroup mapping issue to me but hard to say for sure. They said they weren’t interested in troubleshooting it so, whatareyagonnado? They seem really invested in not liking it though.

I have gotten into arguments here

Yes, that was the joke

is it a good thing for Home Assistant to provide a paid subscription service that will handle that for you?

There are so many differences between HA and Plex that it’s almost difficult to pick which one is most significant. All i’d say is - if plex was at all the same as HA, I would have zero problem with it. If jellyfin adopted HA’s model of paid development, I’d be thrilled. But HA’s strategy is actually pretty unique, it’ll take time for that structure to be stress-tested and propagate.

It does not need Google for anything here, having Google’s SSO doesn’t give them any information they already have.

Yea but not really - google accounts are usually pretty specifically identifiable to a person/ad account/collected internet and device activity. Might not be a big deal to you, but having those things tied together is problematic on a number of levels. You can self-host an SSO, and you can also have a security-focused third-party SSO - both would be marginal improvements over using google’s auth system in terms of privacy.

It does give that to Google, but if your concern is the cops are going to bang on your door for all your illegal pixels that you stream then you’re just as boned. It’s borderline irresponsible to pretend otherwise.

Yes, 100%. If you’re at all concerned about privacy, plex is a terrible idea, with or without SSO. I’m glad you agree.

How you get “I have nothing to hide” out of that is your own pretzel logic.

“What i’m doing is perfectly legal so it doesn’t matter if they have my detailed data”. You’re not hiding it because you think you don’t need to - that’s exactly the argument you’re making. Every step toward data privacy is valuable, even if your total data hygiene practice isn’t perfect. It still matters.

I have a right to store, backup and access my own media and to keep a copy of it for private use

Good for you. Most of us do not.

I’m not keeping a media server performatively

Neither am I, but I guess I do feel quite passionately about keeping it private and I’m not shy about advocating for the practice. Probably for the same reason you’re very tight lipped about what country you’re from - you don’t necessarily think you’ll get swatted if you do, just that it’s a pointless detail to share with strangers if you don’t have to. Most of my family doesn’t care enough about not using netflix or disney+ that they’re happy to keep using them if my offering is too complicated. I’m happy to help them set up and learn how the server works if they’re interested, and a number of them have become enthusiastic self-hosters themselves as a result. If I was operating a mission-critical service on my server then maybe i’d care more about minimizing UX friction but since it’s not, I’m happy with prioritizing privacy and control over polish. That’s a pretty common mentality for a server administrator - i’m not running a SAAS here. At most I’m just the enterprise IT manager trying to keep the office slack channel running.

For the record, I don’t have any misgivings about FOSS as a concept.

You can say that, but boy oh boy is that hard to believe. You certainly don’t think FOSS is worth any level of inconvenience. Looks to me like you’re the kind of person who wants the best tool for every job, regardless of if you could get by with a middling one that supports a FOSS project. That’s fine. I use adobe products for work because I can’t really get by without it, but I still use GIMP or Inkscape when I can and I support those ecosystems with my time and money because it draws more people in. And I actually do want my FOSS tools to be built as side projects, at least at first. There’s a place for polish and professional support, but a lot of this stuff needs to be built out and tested before that kind of thing happens. A lot of these projects act as beta testing for forks that will end up doing one thing really well to a high level of polish. Having a product that’s maybe a little complicated but extremely accessible from a configuration standpoint lets more tech-minded people build on top of them and work toward more polished solutions.

But I certainly don’t find VC backed projects entering into the FOSS space as a good thing. Maybe that competition drives positive movement in the open-sourced ones, but usually they turn out to be ‘embrace, extend, extinguish’ projects. Like, I don’t think meta’s Threads is a positive thing for federated social media, even though by this logic they are making it ‘more mainstream’ by their adoption of activitypub. There just isn’t a way to separate the product they produce from the economic model they operate under, and plex has chosen a model that inevitably leads to enshittification and walled-off content gardens.

I just don’t see any reason to blow smoke for plex. Their UX is fine (great, even), but they’re doing basically everything else wrong. They’re reliant on VC capital, they’re collaborating with private media and tailoring their TOS to protect copyright holders, they’re collecting data they don’t need and forcing features that reduce privacy, they’re changing their privacy policies to enable data sales and monetization, they’re bait-and-switching users by placing popular free features behind paywalls, they’re banning lifetime paid users for perfectly legal use of their services… the list goes on and on. At some point, a company like Plex crosses the line from ‘reasonable profit-seeking’ to ‘actively user-hostile’, and I think they’ve already crossed that line. Maybe you think their UX is worth the abuse, but I certainly do not - not when there’s a perfectly fine alternative that fits my needs and more.

So the Google login could be a problem by itself, and the Plex data gathering would be a much bigger problem by itself, but both together would just mean you are exactly as screwed as with just one.

That’s almost exactly what I was saying, except that using both actually increases your risk just by capturing more detailed logs of your server activity and the associated accounts. Your users could use anonymous usernames or share login credentials if they wanted to without it, but being forced to use google SSO means each user is personally identifiable even if they’re protecting themselves otherwise. It’s the same reason I would never use google’s SSO for another web service if I had an alternative, even if for something completely innocuous. Why give them extra information about my web activity and tie it directly to my verified account, even if it’s something trivial like what plex servers i use or how I’m watching my media and on what devices?

But mostly my point was that using google’s SSO by itself, with your own self-hosted server is dumb because it unnecessarily exposes you where you otherwise would have been fine. That was the whole point of this conversation - not that plex was specifically bad because they used it, but that it isn’t a desirable feature for plex or for a self-hosted alternative. Maybe you just misunderstood that, idk.

cosplay

Where I am people are being black bagged for less than just breaking DRM. I could be disappeared on my way to work tomorrow just for saying something silly like “from the river to the sea”. Maybe you’re privileged enough to feel secure in your legal standing, but that’s not one that I share. Like I said, i’ve gotten burned for using napster when I was young and dumb, and I thought I was safe then, too.

For most people this side of the pacific, ripping DVD’s for personal use is not legal, and streaming them to others is even less so. Any service hosted within the US is subject to that law. You being outside the US but using a private service hosted within it puts you squarely within that jurisdiction, but since you fancy yourself a lawyer, and since IDGAF anyway, i’ll let you mull it over for yourself. If all you’re afraid of losing is access to your plex account then all the power to ya. I just don’t agree with that value judgement.

I’m honestly not sure why you feel so cavalier about your data privacy. If you’re really one of those ‘i’ve got nothing to hide’ folks, I have a larger gripe with you than what a silly ‘plex vs jellyfin’ debate can cover. It’s incredibly shortsighted and normalizes apathy and complacency. There’s no reason to be exposing your private server usage data to private for-profit companies, especially when that activity is already borderline legal at best. My actual fear is that plex gains mainstream attention and comes under legal scrutiny. we go through another tightening of the screws because our bloated media market is bleeding and dragging the rest of the stock market down with it. That’s what happened with napster and the record industry, and it’ll happen with streamers and plex if we’re not a little more discrete.

Yes, rip your dvds. Yes, share them with whoever you want. Go pirate some animes or download a car, IDGAF. But don’t pretend like you’re somehow safe from punitive copyright action just because you’re off in Greenland or whereverthefuck. You’ll end up teaching normies bad habits and poor judgement when it comes to protecting their data privacy.

Again, just don’t be a dumbass about it.

I do care about self-hosting as a viable commercial alternative

Well there you go. I would really rather self-hosting not even be commercial.

I am not ready to give up on the changes required to get there just to feel cool on the Internet

Lmao yes look at me and my data hygiene, you’ll never be as cool as me. It’s clear that you have some misgivings about FOSS as a concept, I guess you can feel good about donating your money to a for-profit entity as a way to stick it to those hippies. God forbid I had tried selling you on linux in this thread, that could have really snowballed.

There are a lot of people here who simply cannot be bothered to figure out remote access

A weird one i saw today was actually “jellyfin took too many resources scanning my library” and ‘if it doesn’t have an SSO my family won’t use it’

I think a lot of people just enjoy plex better and will accept any minor inconvenience as justification. That’s fine though. I’ll swear up and down that apple products are not worth the convenience, either, but there will always be people who simply like them more than others, and thats fine

Also, me using Plex to host copies of my own software legally is not the same as operating a P2P service.

I’m not explaining this to you again. What you described is not legal on a US hosted service like Plex, and even most other countries with DRM exceptions for personal use do not include sharing outside your immediate household. Even if it’s perfectly legal in your country, and the US can’t touch you where you are, Plex is still obligated to abide by US restrictions. Good enough if that doesn’t bother you, but it isn’t completely without risk and you should be well aware of it.

if your concern is the govenrment overreach implications of having a portion of your data leaked, worrying about a smaller leak along the way of actively generating a larger leak is entirely pointless.

What exactly does “government overreach” mean in this context?

Using Google SSO independently is bad. Plex independently is bad. Using both together is worse. Using either while also breaking the law, when there’s a perfectly acceptable way to do neither of those things and still just as easily break the law is a whole lot better.

Conversely, I’d argue that if you have a dozen users and are terrified that the cops are going to come and raid the… I’m gonna say meth lab you’re running on the side, we’re back to the conversation about how cool you are with that dozen users having their Jellyfin clients running on a bunch of Android devices, Smart TVs, Windows boxes or whatever else.

I’m just not a dumbass. Having a dozen users log in without any of them publicly pointing at me or my server IP is a hell of a lot safer than letting a private service log every sign-in and stream event of the server, and then letting a separate private service link those users to accounts with detailed personal information. Those people can install jellyfin on their phones and tablets all they want - google wouldn’t know what servers those clients are connecting to anyway. And even if they did, my server is not associated with my personal details or ISP-assigned IP address. Maybe you just didn’t know that, idk.

I came into this argument from the UX angle, you guys are increasingly convincing me that a significant disincentive for self-hosting to become mainstream

Using a google SSO isn’t a prerequisite for self-hosting becoming mainstream. Maybe SSO generally is, but there are a dozen other ways to achieve the same thing. Maybe I don’t care if it becomes mainstream? Maybe what I actually want is for people to learn tech self-sufficiency so that we’re not indefinitely reliant on SAAS. Maybe i’m content with my special little hobby and I’d rather point and laugh at people who get fucked over by services they delude themselves into believing won’t ever screw them, just because they can’t be bothered to learn a new skill.

you guys are increasingly convincing me that a significant disincentive for self-hosting to become mainstream is that its entire community is convinced that they are doing something wrong, apparently

If you’re as concerned with self-hosting becoming as mainstream as you claim you are, then I’d imagine you’d be more concerned with the late-stage capitalist reality of media distribution and the increasingly restrictive laws surrounding its use. Where I live, the legal structure that protects the right to self sufficiency is very much under question, and continues to get worse. I got burned several times in the napster/limewire days, before it was established precedent that sharing digital copyright material was illegal, and unheard of still that anyone actually got punished for it. I know better than most that you can’t count on those protections indefinitely.

But as an anarchist, I think a little bit of crime is good, actually. More people should be doing crime. But if you’re gonna do it, do the rest of us a favor and don’t be a dumbass about it.

You can’t argue that the guy saying he has a problem with Google’s sign-in specifically has a point and also say that the data mining happening within Plex is WAY more intrusive.

Those are not mutually exclusive statements. In fact, mostly it just makes you an idiot for not having a problem with either.

It is worse than an auth method that isn’t maintained by a known data whore like google. It’s substantially worse when you’re using it with another data whore service. For those of us who administrate remote services and care about not being beholden to google’s data addiction, it is absolutely not a good thing to provide it as the default auth method, which is what the OP was saying. Even if jellyfin included it, I would immediately disable it. Especially since, as a server administrator, I have a vested interest in keeping the activity of that server private. Even if the specific details of the media on it aren’t exposed, I don’t want any party with conflicting interests to my own to know what users are associated with my server. Just having a dozen or so users connected through jellyfin to my IP would be enough for a motivated legal entity to look at me, and I have more than just a private media server to worry about. Is it likely to happen? Probably not. But why would I even risk it?

If you have a source for how apparently US law is directly applicable to any country they have a trade agreement with feel free to point me to this insane new paradigm of international law, though.

I don’t have a source for you, but typically using a US-based platform can give US authorities a jurisdictional hook, especially if the rights holders are US-based or can show commercial harm. That is why US based web services are extraordinarily strict with all of their users, even those who live outside the US. I’m not even saying it’s common, just that it could happen. I seem to remember operators of p2p services getting nabbed at customs while traveling back in the day - it wasn’t illegal where they were, but it sure as fuck was in the US and they were extremely interested in putting the kabash on it.

No question that plex is a more convenient service, but if you have the tech literacy to manage something that’s completely private that is only marginally more complicated, why the fuck wouldn’t you? Then again, maybe if you think you’re more tech literate than you are, it doesn’t seem all that simple.

Lmao, just fuck off. I don’t have time to be your therapist.

Are you saying that the problem is the SSO or Plex?

There’s a problem with SSO’s and there’s a problem with Plex. Go back and read the conversation - that’s not the problem with plex, it’s a problem. Someone said they don’t trust google login, and you were indignant about why that might be, and I was exceedingly patient with explaining why it’s a problem. I like that jellyfin does not provide a google SSO, because I can choose a better, less invasive one as a server admin. I’ve not said anything contradictory here, you’ve just been willfully misreading shit.

Once again, the biggest issue with those hypotheticals is that Plex boots me out… of Plex.

just fucking read the words I so kindly found for you in the TOS (not that it fucking matters if it’s a tos or a eula anyway). It’s also not a fucking hypothetical, Plex has already been exercising this. But I don’t give a fuck if you’re concerned about it, i’m just telling you why so many people are taking issue with it. And given that they’ve already demonstrated that they collect detailed data about your personal library and watching habits, it is certainly not out of the question that they could now sell that data as a part of their new privacy policy.

In addition, Plex shall have the right to take appropriate administrative and/or legal action in the event of breach or (alleged) criminal activity, including alerting legal authorities, as it deems necessary in its sole discretion.

Unless you live in a country without a copyright agreement with the US, you are absolutely liable under this. I have no idea if you do or not, but I’d venture a guess that most people here do. Good for you if it doesn’t apply.

I don’t give a shit what software you use.

a one week test run I did a while ago on a piece of software that didn’t do what I wanted.

Ok, well then why the fuck are you insisting that it’s evidence of poor software design? Are you really bitching about it slugging your system without even looking at what the default settings were, let alone looking to see if they were appropriate for your setup? Like jesus christ, you can’t even play a typical PC game without tweeking your video settings these days, and yet somehow a self-hosted open-source app is supposed to just guess what your setup is?

I’m not going back to Jellyfin just to verify that you’re obviously wrong about it all having been perfectly fixed up to Plex’s standards

yea, lowkey fuck plex standards. I’d sooner use a cheese grater as a razor than go back to that POS

No, the bans stem from the EULA.

Take another look bud.

But maybe you don’t care about any of that shit, either? Idk man the list of things you’re dismissing as unimportant is really adding up.

Plex already knows the stuff you are worried about. The SSO has nothing to do with it. Plex doesn’t need data from Google to know, they already have your personal information.

Jellyfin has zero idea who I am or what accounts/IPs access my server, nor do they know what’s a part of my media catalogue or if they are legally licensed to me. If I were to use google’s SSO, then google would know which accounts/IP’s are accessing my server, which isn’t a huge deal by itself, but if jellyfin were to have information about my entire account and library then it would suddenly be a very big issue.

But Plex does know what’s on your account, and they do limit the number of authenticated users of the account as a part of their TOS and through limitations surrounding their paid plex pass, and they have exercised their right to terminate accounts and pass personal information of infringers along to law enforcement and copyright holders. None of which is even a remote possibility with a completely self-hosted solution. But hey, if you’re happy then more power to ya.

Why should it be possible for the user to erroneously set the software so that scanning a library would grind the whole thing to a halt?

You’ve been extremely vague about what the actual issue was, and the details you HAVE given are often contradictory. I’m getting so tired of this cat and mouse game. Fine, yea. Maybe they should have anticipated your specific use case, and everyone else just got lucky with their config not causing the issue you’re so sure is their fault.

Jellyfin’s interface to add live TV channels

It isn’t designed for that but nice of them to enable you to do it anyway

its overcustomizable tools for skinning (which are needed because the base skin is pretty plain)

This is an outdated complaint, but also fuck them for giving you the option to customize the look, I guess?

the convoluted requirements for remote access

That’s just what remote hosting entails, bud. Nice of plex to hand hold you through the process but it comes at the cost of privacy. It’s easy enough to access via VPN though, or I guess you can expose your home network but doing that without knowing what you’re doing puts you and all your data at risk. Idk how you’re accessing any of your other services though.

the overly strict library parsing paired with the default choice being to keep data stored within the library

I have no idea what this means but I suspect it’s an outdated gripe. Setting up library scans is as straightforward as plex, or at least it is now.

I briefly tried to get books working on it

It’s not designed for that but good of them to make it so you could do that anyway

You can get as condescending as you want, but those are all major UX blockers for key use cases

Lmao, what?! Weren’t you just telling me some people just want something that lets them stream their media to their tv without a hard drive plugged in? And now using it for ebooks is a ‘basic UX block’? GTFO lmao

You are presenting a lot of great hypotheticals and I’ll be happy to stop using Plex if and when they stop being hypotheticals.

it’s not hypothetical, Plex has already been banning users for various reasons, all of which stem from them having access to data about your account, connected users, and server data.

Especially because we’ve moved from “oh, maybe get your family to not use Google to log in” to “actually, get them to move to F-droid or install from source and do so under proper DNS filtering to stop telemetry gathering”.

• someone suggested they didn’t trust google SSO
• you said ‘why does that matter, they don’t collect much info from it’
• I pointed out that it’s still a big deal because of the potential abuses it enables
• you said ‘why should you care, they’ll know you use it from downloading the client app’
• I pointed out that there are ways to use it without them necessarily knowing, and…
• anyway the real risk is associating your identity with a specific host server, not that you have plex on your phone or tv

You’re the only one making this complicated bud.

Oh, and while I get that you get a kick of repeating what your understanding of US law is at me, over here backing up to additional media is explicitly supported by the right to private copy. As is, implicitly breaking DRM.

I was simply telling you that the US has a similar carve out for breaking DRM, but that it didn’t include the use case you are describing. Just giving you a heads-up that it’s a common misconception here, and it could be misunderstood wherever you are too. Chill out. BUT, even if it IS legal where you are, Plex is bound to US law and can and will ban you for breaking it.

Not that it matters because nobody is enforcing these at individuals for private use anyway

Except Plex is enforcing it because it is excplicitly against their terms of service, and have already done so.

but don’t act like anything else is insanity. It’s kind of obnoxious.

I’m not saying it’s insanity you dipshit, i’m saying there are good and valid reasons to avoid a cloud-hosted service not within your control. You’re free to disagree but fuck off with this incredulousness

You’re free to find me annoying, I wouldn’t try to deny that anyway.

You pointed to a ‘technical issue’, and i’ve been pretty upfront about why that isn’t necessarily a problem with the software and more likely a user error. You’re free to not use jellyfin for whatever reason you want but I don’t think it’s accurate to portray that as an issue with the software. Sorry if you disagree.

I haven’t seen any issues with UX design personally, and honestly I haven’t seen anyone making a detailed case here about it, but if all you need is “to be able to open your media without having to plug in a physical drive do your thing” I don’t see anything wrong with jellyfin. Maybe if you really really like your google SSO and can’t figure out how to implement that yourself, great. Use plex, go nuts.

Well, if you have an issue with people knowing you use Plex at all, then… tough luck, because I hate to tell you this, but a media server needs a client and it’s a vanishingly small group of people that will use either Plex or Jellyfin clients and not let Apple, Google, LG, Samsung or whatever other device is running the client software that this is happening.

First:

• not if you install these applications through fdroid or install from source
• not if you block dns queries that report to those servers
• not if you access the service via webURL

but also, it’s not just that they know you use plex or jellyfin, it’s that they know which plex server you use and from what devices you stream from. If, for example, plex decides they want to limit the number of households can stream from a single server (like they’ve already done), all they’d have to do is lock or limit people’s google SSO to that server. They could also report which users are associated with servers engaged in illegal activity when requested, or they could region lock their services or specific media IP’s by request from copyright holders… There’s a ton of abuses that are made possible by even that tiny bit of information they share/collect.

You might not care about it, but a lot of us do. Nobody is trying to convince you to stop using Plex, we’re just trying to explain why we really do not want to use it ourselves

And for the record I do not live in the US and the way their absolutely idiotic copyright loopholes apply here is very much in question. It doesn’t get tested in court much because the times it has been it didn’t go particularly great for copyright holders. Private copying owned media is a right regulated by law here and I will continue to do so.

I have no idea where you live, but plex is an american company. Plex will 100% be forced to comply with copyright takedown requests, and could absolutely penalize you for infringing on american copyright law. Could you be arrested? Maybe not. But there are still a ton of ways you could get fucked because Plex has enshittified their service and has made zero commitments to protecting you or your identity.

we are allowed to back up movies

small thing, but in the US this is technically allowed, but as soon as you format-shift the media (e.g. rip a dvd into a digital format) it is no longer protected. It’s assumed that ‘backing up movies’ is literally ‘duplicate the media in exactly the same format it was originally purchased in’. On top of that, it’s also doubly illegal to then share that media, even as a direct stream via a home server. Idk where you live but I’m actually am not aware of any country who allows for your stated use (unless you’re somewhere without extradition or trade relations with the US like Russia or Cuba, because they don’t give a fuck about US legal claims). Not that it’s commonly prosecuted even in the US, but US companies routinely get takedown requests for that shit and Plex will absolutely throw you under the bus.

You are actually wrong about that first assumption, I did try both at the same time and the problems with Jellyfin moved me over to Plex.

I inferred it from this:

Plex was one of the first things I hosted because all you have to do is installing like you would any local application and it just works

And anyway, plex and jellyfin have different media library configuration requirements. Even if you did them at the same time, you’d have to be kind of lucky to have configured them both on the same media volume correctly without reading any of the documentation or having experience with docker ACL rules.

Just as a for-instance (since I don’t see any specifics), sharing a media volume across separated docker containers on linux requires mapping the same users and usergroups to each container. It’s assumed you should know this, if you’re deploying a stack of services on a server, because containers are designed to be isolated and secure - containers are restricted to accessing files in their approved ACL, so that a bad actor can’t get access to a separate volume from a compromised service. One possible problem you were having (again, just a guess) is that jellyfin was assigning itself ownership of the files/folders on the media volume every time it did its scan, and Plex no longer had permission to access them. It actually doesn’t matter which service was there first - as soon as you had two services accessing the same volume you would have run into this issue. It depends on how you configured both services, and if you gave them privileged access or mapped users properly, ect.

and in fact ran just as well in a container in the NAS holding the files as it did natively on both Windows and Linux

If you’re running both services on a store-bought NAS, the problem could have also been a misunderstanding about the combined overhead requirement for the services. Without making any assumptions about how much thought you put into your configuration, I’d check that as a part of troubleshooting. But, again, seems like you don’t give a fuck about troubleshooting your customized service stack and would rather use a ready-made product. That’s fine.

turns out there are plenty of applications that are pretty agnostic about running inside of a container or not, Plex included.

Jellyfin included also. I’m not sure what the point you’re making though.

Frankly, the biggest issue of doing that, besides how redundant it is, is that Jellyfin will insist on writing a whole bunch of garbage all over your library if you want to set it up its way.

I agree it’s redundant, which is why I personally only deploy jellyfin now. As far as jellyfin writing to your media drive… Yea, I guess that is a difference between the services. This isn’t really a problem if you configure your containers correctly, but if you don’t want to mess with that stuff I can see why it might be an issue for you. Plex may be storing those files on its container volume instead of the mounted media volume, or it could be storing them on their remote server (it’s been a while since I had plex running), which is a fine way to do it too. There are advantages to writing it to the media volume, but I won’t bore you with that

Let alone say that if you didn’t build your car yourself you aren’t skilled enough to have one, which is the actually equivalence here.

Good thing nobody is telling you not to have a homelab or use selfhosted services. If you want to use Plex and only want to drive automatic transmissions, go for it. Doesn’t change my preference or enthusiasm for jellyfin or manual transmissions, though. And given the opportunity, i’ll still passionately debate the advantages to learning stickshift and open-sourced and customizable self-hosted applications. And if you give them a try and run into problems, i’ll gladly help you try to solve them if you’re willing to engage with it - but if you’d rather just complain about how much my preference sucks then i’ll have no problem telling you to stick with what you know next time.

That is not a concern, though. Plex is a perfectly legal piece of software.

There are a bunch of reasons why it might be a concern, and only the least of them has to do with the legality of copyright use.

they assume Plex is itself a liability, which it isn’t.

Except plex has already proven themselves willing to ban users based on their use and streaming practices, so it clearly is a liability

It’s weird how corporate copyright assumptions have seeped to the mainstream and people assume that anything you do with your owned media is illegal unless you’re paying somebody.

If you live inside the US (or a state with trade agreements with the US) and are ripping physical media to store on your server and stream digitally, you are absolutely breaking the law. Doubly so if you are sharing that media with others outside your household.

‘It’s not a problem because I have nothing to hide’ <- you are here.

I think most of the people complaining about jellyfin being difficult either haven’t tried it for at least a year or are trying to use it alongside their plex service without knowing how to configure them properly.

Which is fair, I just didn’t realize how many people were using plex that didn’t have an interest in learning remote service deployment.