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?
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)
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.
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
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.
Only learning curve is naming. Jellyfin seems less forgiving about filenames and folder structure than Plex was.
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
You should definitely watch “A Fish Called Wanda” though. It’s a classic.