Comment on What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their proprietary counterparts?
_cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Jellyfin.
Comment on What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their proprietary counterparts?
_cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Jellyfin.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Debatable. It is an incredible piece of FOSS, but whether or not it’s better than Plex really depends on your use case. Plex is much better for remote access and the “wife factor”.
The initial goal of a self-hosted video platform must be encouraging adoption. And you have to follow a “the customer is always right” (the actual meaning, not the bastardized Karen-screaming-at-customer-service version) mentality in regards to this; Even if you have the best Jellyfin server in the world, it’s ultimately worthless if your friends and family refuse to use it. Your service needs to be accessible to the average user, and the unfortunate reality is that the average user doesn’t even know what a port number or IP address is. When trying to encourage adoption, you’re facing a lot of social inertia in regards to people simply going “eh, I know Netflix isn’t perfect, but it already works.” You need to provide a service that is superior to other platforms in some meaningful way. And simply being free isn’t enough value for some people, because individuals will weigh the cost differently depending upon how heavily they factor it into the Cost:Convenience ratio that they’re willing to tolerate.
And this is where the wife factor comes into play: Is your spouse/partner going to be willing to use it? Does it provide enough convenience that they’ll be willing to ditch the streaming services? Now how about your extended family? And if you’re only ever planning on watching at home on LAN, Jellyfin may be perfect. But Plex’s unified login experience is much easier for the average user to understand. I can walk my mother-in-law through the account creation and login process over the phone, because it’s familiar. If she can figure out how to make a Netflix or Hulu account, she can figure out how to make a Plex account. You simply sign in, and your available libraries show up. Easy.
But Jellyfin will never be able to provide a unified login experience, because the entire platform is built to rebel against that; A unified login would require a centralized authentication server like Plex runs, and that’s specifically what Jellyfin is designed against.
_cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
That’s a whole lotta words to say you don’t know how to set up Jellyfin correctly.
My whole family loves it, they use it across quite a few different devices, and they enjoy the fact that they can get anything they want using Jellyseer. And since I’m not some paranoid nutter that thinks having my services exposed to the web is going to be the end of my life, they also enjoy the unified account experience that the LDAP server provides them, where they can manage their SSO password and 2FA from an easy-to-use web interface that in turn allows them to access all the other services on the server, and from any device anywhere in the world without needing to do stupid stuff like upgrade their router for Tailscale.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 2 months ago
If it’s more difficult to set up, then it may not be better for everyone.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I’d agree with you on the surface, except for the part where virtually every single comment on Lemmy about Jellyfin’s remote access basically boils down to “lol just tell them to use Tailscale. It works fine for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”. Again, I’m talking about the average user.
And it’s not about being a paranoid nutter. Jellyfin has had multiple exploits in the past. Hell, it had a code execution vulnerability from unsanitized FFmpeg API inputs published just last week.
gnuplusmatt@reddthat.com 2 months ago
If you run it in a rootless container, expose it through a reverse proxy and keep it updated there’s very little risk
Zink@programming.dev 2 months ago
The performance of Jellyfin is so much better in my experience. That and the FOSS benefits won me over quickly, and I have had a lifetime Plex pass for years.
The downside is that you have to do a little IT work if you want to share with family in an easy (for them) way and use https. For sure, it’s a thing, but for me as a non web dev it was worth it.
Now I can give family and friends a URL, login, password, and one or more app suggestions depending on their device and type of media. And all of them seem to have snappy performance while not showing my people ads or hitting them up for paid services.
sugarfoot00@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
I agree with all of this, but I do have a bit of pushback- The account creation process, with the steps of create, verify, provide username to host, wait for invite, accept invite, pin to sidebar is enough of a barrier that it stops some people. I have a handful of guest accounts already setup and sorted that I toss out to interested people, and if they find it useful only then do I have them jump through the hoops of creating their own account.
witx@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
You can leave that type of shit out the door and speak like a decent human being
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Tell me you stopped reading, without telling me you stopped reading. I had an entire paragraph that expanded upon it, using entirely gender-neutral pronouns.
dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
They don’t need to, just give them a url, username and password and let them type each for each field.
(If you mean because you want them to configure a vpn to access your jellyfin instance, then just expose it to the internet, which surely you pretty much have to do for your plex instance)
Do people really think this or will they think (like everyone i know) that it’s free and I can watch what I want.