So yes and no on that recommendation. If you are just hosting content for local consumption, transcoding is unnecessary since you have the network bandwidth to just throw the data directly to whatever is playing it. So weaker hardware is perfectly fine. If you are doing lots of concurrent streams or there is network access outside the house, the limited bandwidth can become an issue so transcoding suddenly matters and more powerful hardware comes into play.

I have used many ARM SBCs and a few low-power Intel boards like my current N100 and they’ve all been fine. While I generally dislike Intel their quicksync is very useful in media server configurations. If you are going to be doing a lot of live transcodes, I would consider throwing an ARC GPU in there and having jellyfin utilize the transcode capabilities of the Intel GPU instead of the CPU as it can handle more simultaneous streams. Beware the xe driver as there are issues with it in certain configurations. Same with HuC/GuC. The older standard driver is more likely to just work. Jellyfin and the archlinux wiki have great documentation on this.

NVIDIA used to be top tier here but their transcode tech is pretty old by this point and the quality, while acceptable, isn’t the best. Intel beats them. AMD, generally a preference for me, has a terrible media transcoder. Easily the worst quality of all of them. For raw compute and pushing pixels, AMD all the way but for transcode I would pass.

So to summarize: cheap out if it’s just local access. Transcode is pretty much unneeded. If it’s outside the home and/or had many streams at the same time, Intel for the GPU and AMD for the CPU.

Skip the NAS. They all suck. Roll your own server out of literally anything. Install jellyfin. Enjoy

It depends what you want to do with it. What do you want the server to do?

icloud relay doesn’t affect this because it shuts off when my VPN activates and when at home, icloud relay doesnt affect local LAN IP addresses anyway.

But third party apps don’t share a cache.

The VPN was disabled when switching to WiFi already.

AppleTV and MacBook are on Ethernet. Iphone is failing on both WiFi and cellular using WireGuard to VPN into the local network. The logs say the login attempts are actually successful.

I am on iPhone here. I do have the iCloud relay turned on but that doesn’t work on VPNs or local IP addresses.

Nope. I just have it WireGuard into my network but as you can see, it’s acting up over WiFi too.

quadlets let you create a systemd unit file to start and manage a podman container as easily as a locally installed system service.

Jellyfin is HEAVY when doing trickplay scans. But outside of that, it’s really not that demanding. I’m running on an N100 right now but I’ve run it fine on stuff as weak as a rk3399.

Open source is certainly in a great position now but there are some things it’s just not doing that I’m frankly too dumb to do myself. For example, there’s no open source answer to appleTV. The closest thing we have is androidTV and it’s just awful.

I would love to see a TV-centric desktop environment you could run on top of any typical Linux distro. Something implementing live tiles like old windows phone had, a web app that you could access with a smartphone and use to control it like a remote, single-task interface rather than a task-juggling interface we have on normal DEs, sigh. I have a vision I cannot possibly create because that would take incredible skill that I just don’t have to make and I can’t just whine that nobody is making it for me.

Meanwhile, all my Apple stuff works together in a way I generally approve of.

I need to transition away from this at some point but there aren’t always open source solutions for this.

I haven’t learned about kubes yet. I do use and love quadlets though.

Point at a perfectly functioning thing on my server, blow it up, relearn and fix the thing.

An IT friend of mine said “your home server should be like a zen garden…”. I was taken aback. Where else would I get to play with all the new shit I need to learn eventually? Surely not in production. And the home server is meant to serve up distractions not files.

I miss adderall.

Look abroad. The US is about to enter a recession so the last ones hired will likely be the first ones fired. Get out while you can.

I quickly got pissed at synology and QNAP and just started making my own shit. Now when anything fails it’s my own damn fault and I can actually fix it. This sounds bad but it’s actually a much better experience. I learn a lot and have fun. I’m the guy who made all those G4 cube retrofit kits on Thingiverse. It’s been a great distraction for me over the years.

On the subject of containers, learn podman. That’s where everybody seems to be migrating to.

…you fight like a cow!

When I was in high school, I joined speech and debate. I was terrible, but I stayed for all 4 years. By the time I hit college, I could speak publicly with ease, putting me ahead quite a bit. Now, I’m just an obnoxious pain in the ass so I kind of overcorrected.

giving rocks anxiety

Well I don’t know what a lawyer would actually do for me here. I haven’t suffered any damages yet. Doesn’t it have to directly impact me first, then I would have a case? The whole thing is about things NOT happening to me, eg NOT getting promoted.