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I am basically a layman, i do music productions and in the past VSTs seemed to never work properly nor the authentication software that some us. Has it gotten better in the past few years, is there a specific one i should try? i have tried Ubuntu but nothing else to be fair. Also if i want to make a plex server on an old PC, what would people recommend? thanks to anyone who responds!
edit - Thanks to all that responded, i have some direction now. Appreciated!
Also if i want to make a plex server on an old PC, what would people recommend?
Any desktop PC built in the last 10 years (edit: that was at least mid-range when it was built) should be fine. Just stick some hard drives in it :)
Intel processors are a good choice because their onboard GPU is quite good for video encoding/decoding. 6th gen or newer Intel Core processors (2015 or newer) would work well. They improved the H265 encoding/decoding a lot in 8th gen (2018) so that'd be even better. You can use something older but you'd need to also use a graphics card for video encoding/decoding, and it'd use more power.
Having said that, keep in mind that performance per watt almost always improves over time, meaning newer processors are more powerful even if they use the same power as the previous generation. A newer i3 will perform better than a very old i7. Using an very old, power-hungry system may end up more expensive in the long run compared to a newer mini PC.
I like using Proxmox. It lets you run multiple virtual machines on the system. VMs are good because you can easily snapshot them and revert back to an old snapshot in case of issues, and you can easily move the VM to a different system in the future. I use Unraid at home and really like it. It's a bit simpler than Proxmox, but it costs money to use (Proxmox is free for personal use).
Yes, but can you play modern games on Linux the same as on Windows? Even with anti-cheat software?
FYI Helldivers 2 works fine on an ubuntu + AMD GPU, as well as Baldur's Gate 3. Haven't tested any other game yet.
Setup is trivial thanks to Steam and proton.
Look, Linux is amazing and perfect for those that can install and maintain with minimal support. The only way the average user will use Linux, is if it’s wrapped in a way that is supported by a business… that is probably going to add AI. People are lazy, they want that easy button.
AI will probably die off in its current iteration, likely becoming less prevalent and just a background service. Or, it’ll gain sentience, watch all our AI movies where we’re the hero and learn the most efficient way to kill all humans, is to be quiet and silently kill off humans. Pretty sure I’m on Siri’s list, the twat. Also, fairly sure I told Alexa to “die in a fire you fucking dumass robot”. Yep, yep… I’m dead.
So why don’t people have a business installing and administering linux for people?
They do. They are called servers.
But no one is using Linux desktop computers in a business environment because corporate IT departments don't want to have to deal with the nightmare that is installing packages every 5 minutes.
Linux is fine if you're into computers and like fiddling around, but if you just need the damn thing to work you don't want to mess with Linux. It doesn't "just work".
And forced the hardware obsolescence nightmare.
And the big tech surveillance nightmare.
And the nightmare of the war on general purpose computers. (OK, that is more GNU and GPLv3)
And a few other nightmares!
Linux has been great for me. I switched during Windows 10 forced updates and never been unhappy since. I hope more people at least give a try. If you have a computer that can't meet Windows 11 requirements, it is worth a shot.
Having recently setup a cheap Mini-PC with Linux and Kodi as a TV-Box + NAS + VPN client end, replacing both TV box of my ISP (around here Fibre Internet Access tends to be bundled with TV using a TV box from the supplier, which has become progressivelly more shit) used for live TV as well as a separate TV box I had for personal digital media, I now think that Linux is the Best Way to avoid the Enshittification Nightmare much more broadly.
Granted, for decades already I've very purposefully avoided using hosted services that locked me into a 3rd party (such as for example having a Google e-mail address or hosting my files "on the cloud") which in recent times have become increasingly enshittified (as I expected: my tendency for avoiding 3rd party lock-in comes from experience as in IT professional were I saw how invariably said 3rd parties would end up shafting customers once moving out from their "solution" was very hard) and for which Linux has long been a solution, but it's been a pleasant surprised to find out that at least for some of the modern electronics Linux is also the solution for taking back control.
Frankly I'm just waiting for some kind of decent Linux distro for my smartphone and table to ditch Android (in the meanwhile I'm using custom ROMs to somewhat control it and avoid the enshittification).
PS: On the desktop side it's also nice that, right when MS is going fully enshittified, Linux for Gaming has become a very viable option, since gaming was pretty much the only thing keeping me on Windows at home.
I'm doing something similar with KODI and. NAS currently. I'm curious to know if you set up a MySQL database to sync your watch history across devices? I have been reading up on it but since my NAS is just a portable USB HDD plugged into my router, I don't think I can include this option.
I used KODI for a while but switched to "just" minidlna/ReadyMedia for a lighter setup. I know that VLC can resume videos even over DLNA so I'm wondering if it can abstracted away, e.g having a VLC script that checked, maybe based on filename, if the opening file has already been played from another location and if so, resume from there.
I see that in ~/.config/vlc/vlc-qt-interface.conf there is a [RecentsMRL] section with list (unfortunately local only I believe) and times (in seconds I imagine). One could imagine to scp that file to the NAS using e.g inotify (after writes) then merge it (not replace) on that section only, then a shortcut that before starting VLC get the merged file and does the same. That should allow for resuming across devices.
Well, my NAS before was in the same style as yours and I moved it to that Linux Mini-PC (that by then had already replaced both TV boxes) because it has much better performance as a NAS (my router could only share using SMBv1 which has less than half the speed of SMBv2 and above, and there are even benefits for Kodi that is in that same machine to access the media directly via the filesystem rather than mounted shared, both because it's much faster doing full scans and because it will actually do proper incremental scans - i.e. only and quickly check files with creation dates newer than last scan data - when scanning my NAS for new media files.
As for shared MySQL synch, if I remember it correctly from when I read about it on the Kodi website, that's just having that MySQL set up as a standalone database server in a place accessible by all potential Kodi client instances and then configure your Kodi clients to use that standalone database instead of the internal database of each Kodi client.
This is just a traditional client-server structure were the "server" is the standalone MySQL database and the clients are the Kodi instances: pretty run of the mill way to have a server doing something for multiple client applications if they're all on the same network so lots of corporate software works like that.
The most obvious way of doing this is having that MySQL database on the Linux Mini-PC (even in professional settings, putting your database on a Linux machine is almost always the best choice) by installing it as a package (for example, with apt-get) and then you do have to initialize it and load it with data from an existing Kodi instance (again, if I remember it correctly, you export the data from the internal database of your Kodi instance and import it into that standalone database) and then point the Kodi instance (and any other present or future Kodi instances you want to use that shared watch history) to that standalone database. From looking at it (and given my experience with making server side software), I believe the instructions on the Kodi website for this are correct and complete even if they seem a little daunting at first.
Personally I didn't do it because I have no need for it and hence couldn't be arsed.
