Uh, that’s an interesting update, I’ll give it a look, I use protonup for my “steam machine”, use within steam would be a good feature there.

I do prefer cli applications, so I think I still prefer mine ;)

So protonup -qt was to comfortable for you to use?

There FTFY

Plex server doesn’t need to be “portable”

Strongly disagree, I’ve switched my media server several times in the past decade for a multitude of reasons, having things in docker has allowed me to do this seamlessly.

Also you’re ignoring all of the other benefits of running in docker, from isolation to automation.

and running it in docker definitely doesn’t make it easier.

Plex is the only self-hosted service that is purposefully trying to block you from being ran in docker. All other things are just much easier to run in docker, that’s part of the appeal, reproducible builds eliminate the “it works on my machine” errors.

There absolutely are programs that make sense to run in docker, but Plex server isn’t one of them.

Why do you think it doesn’t make sense? Does Jellyfin make sense to you to run in docker? Why are they different?

Also, Plex only supports Ubuntu and CentOS, none of which I run on my server, so the only OFFICIAL way to run Plex is Docker.

There’s zero need to run anything in docker, it just makes things easier and portable.

What Plex does is closer to having an embedded tailscale client, you can access Jellyfin remotely with tailscale for free, but OP specifically asked for no VPN.

That being said, I’m not opposed to Plex charging for that service, even a tailscale like server costs something to maintain. My gripe with Plex is that it purposefully shoots itself in the foot to force you into their paid service, i.e. it actively tries to isolate itself so you can’t access it remotely, which means that it can’t run inside a docker container unless you give it network host access, otherwise it only considers other docker containers locals and doesn’t let you watch your own content from another machine in the same network.

Because clients would probably fail if there’s an authentication layer on front that they’re not expecting.

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/5415 nothing too serious, but here you go

IIRC Envy clients can connect to Jellyfin, it’s part of the reason why they don’t change the API despite security issues.

Except most people have almost the same structure because of media organizers like radarr/sonarr. At the very least they should hide that behind a setting to not require auth (since the header should be there for most clients) so only people running an old client would be affected. They could also add an extra salt to that hash or something similar.

I agree, it’s not critical, but it shouldn’t be hand waved either. And like I said, security is relative, I would argue for most people this is fine, but I still think this should be taken more seriously.

Secure is relative, you should be aware that jellyfin itself has security issues https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/5415 most of which are harmless, but at least one is fairly serious and allows people to watch your media without authentication, and adding an extra layer of authentication on the proxy would likely cause issues with clients.

That being said, if you’re okay with those security issues what I would do is have a cheap VPS, connect both machines to tailscale, and have something like Caddy on the VPS to do the forwarding.

So? Jellyfin only needs 8096, the other two are https and lan discovery, you can also add 1900 for DNLA. On the other hand Plex has 8 additional configurable ports for other stuff, but that’s besides the point because it requires network_mode: host otherwise it pretends it can’t be seen.

1. Copy the compose.yaml from https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-jellyfin/#user-group-identifiers and adjust, e.g.:

services:
  jellyfin:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/jellyfin:latest
    container_name: jellyfin
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Europe/Madrid
    volumes:
      - ./config:/config
      - ./media:/media
    ports:
      - 8096:8096
      - 8920:8920
      - 7359:7359/udp
    restart: unless-stopped

2. Run docker compose up -d

3. Navigate to http://<IP>:8096

4. Follow the wizard to create a user and libraries.

5. Profit

Steps for Plex:

1. Copy the compose.yaml from https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-plex/?h=plex#umask-for-running-applications and adjust, e.g:

---
services:
  plex:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/plex:latest
    container_name: plex
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
      - VERSION=docker
    volumes:
      - ./config:/config
      - ./media:/media
    ports:
      - 32400:32400
    restart: unless-stopped

2. Run docker compose up -d

3. Navigate to http://<IP>:32400

4. Create an account with Plex, give them your email and create a password with the specific requirements they impose. Agree with their use policy and confirm the pop-ups about ads and such.

5. You can now watch Plex media. Clicking your media will only have a link to https://www.plex.tv/media-server-downloads/

6. Look everywhere to figure out where to add your local media and give up.

7. Look in Google and no one has this issue.

8. Spend a few hours trying and give up.

BTW, the issue there that took me months to figure out is that while Plex documentation says that you only need to expose that port, it only works in network host mode, so unless you give it full control of your network it just refuses to work.

I have set up both. Honestly Jellyfin was MUCH more easy to setup because Plex requires a very specific way to setup the network otherwise it craps its pants and refuses to work on LAN.

But after figuring out those pain points, both are set and forget. The main differences are privacy concerns vs wide access outside of LAN and on more devices.

Yup, but all that being said I still run Jellyfin and have no intention of switching to Plex. And while I would like to see them fix these issues, I understand (in part) why they won’t and I’m okay with my tail scale setup. Also the vast majority of issues are very minor, but the ability to watch any media without login is so major that I think it’s worth bringing up every time someone mentions exposing Jellyfin online.

Agree, I don’t consider most of them a risk, but I do like to bring this to the attention of people who are exposing Jellyfin to the web so they can make an informed decision.

Realistically the only advantage of Plex is being able to watch it over the internet without a VPN. Which means it makes it easier to get friends and family access to your server or to access it yourself from random smart tvs outside your house.

If you only watch at home or have a fire stick that you take with you to watch abroad or your friends/family members have one and can setup a VPN on it it’s not needed.

You do know that there are security issues with that, right? For example, if someone can guess your media files they can watch them https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/5415

Have they released another update? I’ve already updated it when they announced the steam compatibility. I was able to get it to dinput and work once, but it reverted and wasn’t able to get it to work with he dongle and recognize the back paddles again.

No, there isn’t a need for a naive controller driver to be part of steam. So much so that in fact it isn’t, the driver on Linux is called hid-steam and it’s open source and was developed with help from Valve, which is why the controller works even outside of Steam.

What you keep missing is that the default behavior is purposefully that of a mouse+KB because it’s what makes sense. Go ahead and plug the controller on a Linux machine and you will be able to use it as a mouse, click on a game to launch it, then it will become a controller when the game tries to grab it (unfortunately some games try to be smart about this and fail miserably and don’t detect it), but a naive one, similar to the Xbox controller, you’ll miss the back buttons, touchpads and extra sensors because most controllers don’t have them, and without SteamInput to remap those on the fly you’ll be left with whatever the game decides to handle, which is usually just an Xbox controller. That SDL thing you linked gives a way for games to handle those extra inputs, but it’s still relying on the open source driver that’s already there, and it depends on the game to use it.

You’re not asking for a driver, you have that already, you’re asking for SteamInput to be released separately from Steam, which is a weird ask. SteamInput is a product that Valve develops to bring people to Steam and allows to remap any controller to any input, nothing stops people from making an alternative to it, but expecting Valve to release it separately is weird.

I meant the remapping of the back paddles only seems to work in Bluetooth for me, the controller itself works on both modes, but that is not surprising to me as most controllers just work out of the box on Linux.