Mikelius

Yeah, in my example, I have various genres of music I listen to and some days I’m in the mood for one and not another. Some of those might have subgenres I am in the mood to listen to. For example: Metal might break into subfolders called black metal, thrash metal, melodic metal, etc. Based on where I feel they belong the most. If I’m in the mood for some melodic metal today, I’ll go there. Or EDM, I’ll have a folder for Psytrance, another for House, etc…

Rather than trying to edit the metadata on thousands and thousands of files every time I change media systems as I’ve done over these years, it’s 100x simpler for me to just navigate to the folders directly and not care about how the system “wants” to organize it. Every media system wants to organize differently and I’m kind of tired of having to spend hours editing all my music just to get it to organize the way that works for me, so that’s where I’ve gotten to the point of just using folder structures.

I could never get Plex to work the way I wanted it to, so I’m actually someone who moved to Kodi and then to Emby. Once I got into Emby, I’ve yet to leave it. My biggest problem now is that I want to leave it for Jellyfin, but the lack of many things I love about Emby have never been moved to Jellyfin.

For example, I have a very specific organization of my music libraries I use to navigate what I want to listen to much quicker, since I’m into all kinds of genres of music. Emby allows me to navigate by folder structure, so if I’m in the mood for heavy metal one day, go to that folder. If classical another day, go there. Jellyfin on the other hand didn’t have folder structure view and even though it’s one of the top requested features for the past few years when I last checked, it’s never been added…

I think the day Jellyfin does fill in these gaps, assuming new ones aren’t introduced due to Emby also improving, I’ll finally jump over.

I guess to the original topic, I do think Jellyfin exceeds Plex though lol.

Plus 1 to Venstar. Got myself the T7900 and even though it offers internet access, I just blocked it at my router and connected it to the network, controlling it through home assistant. No need for third party access and whatnot with it since it’s completely local.

Also hard to relate. Got my Gentoo server running full auto updates every morning and then send an ntfy alert on success or failure. Haven’t seen a failed update in so long (other than the occasional package that had a bad build or something once in a while).

Back when I was fresh in the Gentoo and Linux world (Gentoo is where I started) and updating once a month, I can definitely say I ran into issues… dunno if it’s that big of an issue these days though.

“Texas Data Privacy and Security Act”… This is a thing? lol

For those of us not using Wayland, any idea if this still applies? Waiting on my flatpak version to support audio sharing with screen share… And please performance improvements.

Haha, 1 year ago… Cannot remember, but I’m positive it was some failed autocorrect. Unfortunately I can’t figure out what was autocorrected. I’d just ignore “dusky” in that sentence. I don’t even know what word means lol

Raid 1 has saved my server a couple of times over from disaster. I make weekly cold backups, but I didn’t have to worry about it when my alert came in notifying me which drive went dead - just swap, rebuild, move along. So yeah I’d say it’s definitely worth it. Just don’t treat raid as a backup solution - and yes, continue to use an external cold storage backup solution as you mentioned. Fires, exploding power supplies, ransomware, etc don’t care if you’re using raid or not.

Actually, there are some apps and even phone level things that do try to call to custom DNS, ignoring all the phone settings, including those defined in the global settings. Termux nslookup is one I can think of at the top of my head that ignores the phone’s settings and instead tries to call to Google DNS. I’ve got DNS default blocked in a custom script for AFWall on my phone, excluding calling my custom DNS, and see the block frequently hit. Just now checking, I see 54 blocks on 8.8.8.8:53, 2 blocks on 1.1.1.1:53, and 16 on “other” port 53 (catch all block).

Think the best solution is either a router firewall setup if always on the wifi, or a phone firewall app that can act as a VPN and just default block everything, or something like that. If rooted, AFWall does wonders.

I’ve been using the fdroid syncthing-fork version for a long time now and haven’t had any issues at all… Doesn’t mean it’ll last forever but it’s been getting the job done for me even in its current state.

… And can’t remember my original reason to use the fork instead lol

Rarely do I find software I need that’s not in the repo, but when I do, I just dusky build it myself. Not at my machine now, but I think I only have one PPA that’s not default added. In the other cases where I don’t want to build the app, it tends to be in Flatpak too.

That being said, although Mint is technically based on Ubuntu, it really doesn’t feel like it at all. I personally can’t stand Ubuntu, but again all personal opinions. If Debian-based systems didn’t work for you and an arch based distro did, then go with it. Everyone’s needs are their own and that’s why we have so many choices :D

I’m a Linux mint user for my main system and am no beginner. As others have said, it’s friendly to both beginners and advanced users, it’s good to see you’ve made that choice.

That being said, don’t stop there. Whether it’s in a virtual machine or some old laptop, also try one of the “from scratch” systems. I went with Gentoo and that is the root of where a ton of my Linux knowledge started. It’s my favorite distro simply because it has that history for me. You’ll find everyone has their own favorites for their own reasons, so be sure to explore and find the one that you enjoy and helps you learn.