Trying to be as helpful as I can, I think you might consider streaming (Plex/Jellyfin) and downloading (*arrs) as two seperate concerns.

Arrs:

For now don’t worry about anything other than sonarr (tv shows) or radarr (movies). you can add the more complexity once you get it working.

These *arrs do two main things:

• Connect to a “transport” to get new media or update existing media. This is a torrent client or a nzb/usenet client.
• Manage your media files (such as storage strategies).

I would create a minimum viable config like this:

[sonarr] ----> [transmission or whatever torrent/nzb client]

at that point you should be able to download tv shows and you can building on it. Next steps might be nzbget, radarr or seerr (which is a very nice way to surface this functionality to your users), or connect things like prowlarr.

The other thing I would say is use something like Docker for this. Easy to make changes that way and provision new services. Here’s my arrs stack’s docker-compose.yml (which is by far not best practice, but it might help you)

services:

  ##############################
  # Transport
  ##############################
  sabnzbd:
    image: 'linuxserver/sabnzbd:latest'
    container_name: sabnzbd

    extends:
      file: ../_templates/template.yaml
      service: large

    networks:
      - arrs-edge

    volumes:
      - './sabnzbd:/config'
      - '/media/web/downloads:/downloads'
      - '/media/web/incomplete-downloads:/incomplete-downloads'
      - '/media/web/watched:/watched'

  transmission-openvpn:
    image: haugene/transmission-openvpn
    container_name: transmission

    extends:
      file: ../_templates/template.yaml
      service: large

    networks:
      - arrs-edge

    devices:
      - /dev/net/tun

    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN

    ports:
      - 9091:9091

    volumes:
      - /media/web/torrent-data:/data
      - /media/web/books-import/torrents:/data/watch
      - ./transmission/config:/config



  ##############################
  # Arrs
  ##############################
  radarr:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/radarr:latest
    container_name: radarr

    extends:
      file: ../_templates/template.yaml
      service: nolimit

    # environment:
    #   - UMASK=022

    volumes:
      - './radarr:/config'
      - '/media/movies:/movies'
      - '/media/web/downloads:/downloads'
      - '/media/web/torrent-data:/torrent-data'

    networks:
      - arrs-edge

  sonarr:
    image: ghcr.io/linuxserver/sonarr:develop
    container_name: sonarr

    extends:
      file: ../_templates/template.yaml
      service: nolimit

    volumes:
      - './sonarr:/config'
      - '/media/tv-shows-1:/tv-shows'
      - '/media/web/downloads:/downloads'
      - '/media/web/torrent-data:/torrent-data'
      - '/media/web/torrent-data/completed/sonarr:/data/completed/sonarr'
      - '/media/tv-shows-3:/tv-shows-2'

    networks:
      - arrs-edge

  prowlarr:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/prowlarr:latest
    container_name: prowlarr

    extends:
      file: ../_templates/template.yaml
      service: medium

    volumes:
      - ./prowlarr:/config

    networks:
      - arrs-edge

  seerr:
    image: ghcr.io/seerr-team/seerr:latest
    init: true
    container_name: seerr

    extends:
      file: ../_templates/template.yaml
      service: medium

    volumes:
      - ./seerr:/app/config

    networks:
      - arrs-edge
      - pangolin-arrs-edge

    healthcheck:
      test: wget --no-verbose --tries=1 --spider http://localhost:5055/api/v1/status || exit 1
      start_period: 20s
      timeout: 3s
      interval: 15s
      retries: 3

    restart: unless-stopped

networks:
  arrs-edge:
    external: true
  pangolin-arrs-edge:
    external: true

Plex vs Jellyfin

Everyone one loves to talk about how they use jellyfin, but I suspect many more people quietly run Plex. You should probably try both, but some things to be aware:

Jellyfin:

Pros:

• Very configurable and extensible with a massive plugin library
• Free
• No bloat
• Excellent codec support

Cons:

• No streaming tunnel. If you use cloudflare tunnel, you aren’t allowed to stream media. If you use pangolin, you can create something on Oracle’s free teir that should be good enough. but you need to configure and set that up. Plex just works out of the box
• Significant security issues. I really don’t wont to start a flame war, but there are issues that I find concerning such as streams being no-auth etc. In their defence, they’re working through the issues. You could probably manage this with some good reverse proxy configs.
• UI can be a bit slow on older hardware. Plex isn’t great either, but in my experience, Jellyfin is worse.

Plex

Pros:

• Has an included tunnel service for remote access which requires very little configuration
• Everything just works
• UI is pretty responsive. Better than AWS Prime apps on my tv, worse than netflix/youtube.

Cons:

• Not free. However, they frequently have significant sales on their lifetime membership.
• Spammy home view. You can disable this on each client, but its just an extra level of confusion for non techies connecting to your system.
• Very little extensibility. They use to support plugins but those days are pretty much gone.
• It chokes on some HDR codecs on my 5 year old tv I find, where as jellyfin doesn’t

Personally, I think Plex is best if you want to access this stuff remotely and you haven’t yet configured a reverse tunnel that can stream media. If you have a pangolin, or you’re comfortable opening a port on your home router, or you have no need to stream remotely, then Jellyfin might be worth looking at if for no other reason than its ecosystem of plugins. I have both available remotely, but I use Plex more than I use Jellyfin.

My servers are one NUC clone and a 4*16tb NAS. I have a lot of docker containers running constantly and yet cooling has never really been an issue for me. A larger concern is I would rather not see it, so It’s hidden it under furniture. The fans on the NAS have attracted a layer of dust, and one day I might clean it. Kidding. I wont.

My security team involves a bull dog named Sophie, who has never done more than lick any other being, but I’m banking on burglars not knowing this.

I say it’s like reddit when it was smaller and less obnoxious. If they inquire more, I discuss federation by describing email. I mostly try to sell that people are nicer and you start to know your netisan compatriots. I haven’t been successful in convincing anyone to join as far as I know.

I don’t mind smart products, though I’m not sure what problem is solved by a screen on a fridge. That said, I do hate it when these devices need to rely on the cloud to function, and Ads I can’t tolerate–I usually try to block the DNS address for things that like to spy on me or show me ads.

This sort of stuff damages the Samsung as a brand. It makes me unlikely to consider Samsung for other products like TVs.

I’ll add it to my linked in profile to warn potential coworkers.

I think that’s a pretty good response. More details will probably emerge in the next few days that could change my mind, but for now that gives me a bit of confidence in their platform.

In comparison, a few years ago I was a patient at an IVF clinic in Sydney. I saw some absolutely bonkers security and repeatedly raised it with them. They wouldn’t hear it, and almost expectedly they were hacked and now my sperm count is public information. Their response was delayed and appalling. If my medical records were treated a severely as a streaming platform, I would have been happy.

Maybe there’s more to it, but I really don’t get the last note about Tidal: Essentially, if you use Tidal, you should know the CEO is has a large ego and is a crypto bro.

I’m sure he’s very annoying, but I’m not inviting him to my house for dinner.

I needed a good laugh with all that’s happening in the world. Thank you.

I use authentik and like it. The learning curve isn’t that steep so not a lot of wasted investment if you decide to ditch it for something else. No password flow with webauthn is pretty cool.

I agree. About 10 years ago I had a some unstable dependencies hit in the middle of a major crunch/product release at work. When it was vital I was productive, I was instead trouble shooting my laptop. I moved to mac the next day and was surprised how far the OS had come, and that I could run zsh, nvim etc. Not to mention since apple silicon its rare I need to take a charger with me anywhere.

I still have a linux thinkpad for personal use, and all my personal servers are linux. My heart is linux, but a lot will have to change to take me away from a macbook.

IMO, you want ram more than you want processing power. 16 gig ought to be enough. Most of the time your containers will sit dormant and just consume memory. However since you want to run Jellyfin, get a recent CPU which can do hardware decoding of popular codecs. There’s charts online that show what generation can handle what codecs. Ideally you don’t want that done by software. You should still be able to find something cheap.

In terms of placement. It depends a lot on noise IMO. If you’re running something small without magnetic storage, you’re probably fine to stick it anywhere. If you have several data-centre grade hard drives, you will probably want to keep it somewhere where you wont hear it all day.

In terms of upgrading, I’m not sure if its as much of a concern as you might think. I run probably about 30 docker containers off a NUC clone and a seperate NAS, and that has worked pretty well for the last few years. I can always add more drives to the NAS, but otherwise its fine. Also, many of my services scale to zero with sablier+traefik, and I schedule filesharing for low bandwidth times. This makes things pretty manageable.

When asked how he could admire an airforce general despite being a pacifist, MLK jr responded "I judge people by their own principles – not by my own.” Judge that redditor by the principle of someone whose career is helping children but instead exploits them.

I agree it doesn’t matter how many children he’s helped. I’ve heard from my Hindu friends that good deeds won’t naturalise bad Karma. Im not religious and don’t believe in karma, but I think this is well grounded. It doesn’t matter how many children he has helped, it doesn’t change the fact that he has damaged so many others for sexual gratification.

The guys a vile worm, and think you’re right to judge him.