My wife consumes whatever media I throw at our Plex server and I’d like to stick with it (The tv’s + set top boxes/remote controls are all easy for her to use and stream Plex fine)

I’d grabbed an old work PC I replaced years ago, Windows 10, and tossed a Plex server on it and it’s worked for a long time but recently despite being used for NOTHING but Plex, its bloated itself like most Windows machines and I found Cortana taking 90% CPU (despite being disabled via registry) and some updates failing over and over.

I’d like to replace it (the software) but really no idea where to start, even the most helpful sites are just “use your favorite Unix then install Plex” or “Here are 56 perfect versions of Unix to install for your Plex server”

Honestly I use it for nothing except Plex, is there something easy enough I could look at?

  • FashtasOPEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Thanks, I decided to see what happened with a Mint Install (Before I saw your reply) so as a Toe-in-water thing to learn more about the OS and see what stuff was like. I only Kitty into a Linux server for work and do some basic tasks on it occasionally so was interested.

    An … interesting experience… trivial install, easy enough to understand the UI, entirely failed to get a Plex server working though… Nothing on the network can see it (Local works fine) which doesn’t make much difference because Plex has nothing to server since it can’t see the folder with movies on it due to, I believe, ownership issues (The files are on a portable USB drive)

    Still fiddling but most help documents descend into arcane command line arguments very quickly and are generally “wrong” in that they suggest editing files that don’t exist in folders that aren’t there.

    Still… a learning experience :) (Easy enough to kill it and tried Debian if I can’t work out chown!

    • FashtasOPEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Hah! Apparently in the long list of UFW commands I was running, the first one didn’t run or I missed it, can see the server now at least, just need it to see the files!
      Entertaining but the wife is getting impatient :/

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        Just a disclaimer I have never used Plex has I use Jellyfin.

        For your firewall mint has a GUI for it. I’m not sure why your firewall is even turned on as it should be off by default.

        • FashtasOPEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          Could be, dunno yet how to tell these things but the issue was a port was not open. Once opened the server was seen fine!