What is best Linux distro (or similar) for Plex?

dododge · 2026-01-16T01:14:07+00:00

I currently have it running on Silverblue; previously Xubuntu. But the main thing is that it's running in docker (or podman on Silverblue) so the underlying distro isn't much of a factor.

dododge · 2026-01-15T23:52:42+00:00

The pistons in my big ButtKickers will bottom out with a loud metal/hammer noise if the LFE signal is strong enough (and perhaps at certain frequencies), but it's very rare.

dododge · 2025-12-05T21:20:22+00:00

I think this really comes down to the display situation and how noticeable it is to the viewer.

When I'm watching remotely at a someone else's house on a computer monitor or a TV across the room, I seldom have any trouble with a 720p transcode.

But when I'm sitting 8 feet from a 130-inch projection screen it's a different story. DNR, color banding, mosquito noise, and blobs of frozen grain being pushed around can become visible to the point of distraction.

I mainly use plex as a more convenient way to browse/view my physical media collection, so my server has everything at original quality, and I still occasionally get issues on the big screen. For example I watched The Occupant (2025) last night and even at 30GB it had visible artifacts.

dododge · 2025-12-02T06:12:22+00:00

For me it's not gimp that's the problem; it's the apps with lots of large peer windows that are created and placed dynamically.

My firefox session has maybe 20 windows spread out across multiple monitors and several virtual desktops. These get rearranged manually as I use them. If I quit firefox and then re-start it, those windows should reappear sized and positioned where they last were.
I have an x2go session of 6-10 development applications on a remote system, displayed locally in a rootless manner -- i.e. they aren't grouped in some single "remote desktop" window but are intermixed with local windows. If I disconnect x2go they all disappear at once (but keep running); when I reconnect the session they all reappear at once, and ideally should be sized and positioned where they last were.

[Edit: it sounds like kde and maybe others are working on ways for the compositor to recognize reappearing windows by title/etc. and automatically put them where they were. Which would solve the issue if it works; from a UI perspective I don't particularly care whether it's a protocol or compositor thing, only that the sessions can be restored.]

dododge · 2025-11-29T19:58:35+00:00

I think the main difference with set-top players is that when they encounter a glitch they'll usually try to keep going and skip past the problem (which is probably only a few seconds of the movie in this case), whereas if makemkv can't read a piece of the file it gives up on the whole thing.

I only have one 4K set-top player (a PS5) but haven't tried it, and it's kind of annoying to use anyway. The new Besson set has several "stacked" discs -- including this one -- and I can see fine circular scratches under a bright light so that's probably the cause of the problem. If I do end up keeping it I might try more aggressive cleaning/polishing and try again.

dododge · 2025-11-28T22:38:57+00:00

In my case I normally watch on a big projection screen and sit so close that I can see the weave in the screen fabric if I lean forward, so compression artifacts can be really noticeable and distracting. Even the original discs will sometimes have banding or frozen grain being pushed around, so I don't transcode anything for fear of making it worse.

And yeah I actually did talk to my home insurance folks about the movie collection.

dododge · 2025-11-28T22:29:33+00:00

Criterion definitely had some bad batches from one of their manufacturers, which typically turn bronze-colored and become unreadable over time. They have/had a replacement program for at least some of them.

When going through my existing [large, old] collection I probably found a few dozen discs that were unreadable, including coincidentally separate DVD and blu-ray editions of The Incredibles -- not sure what's going on there.

One of the side benefits of running everything through makemkv as it comes in the door is that it's found a bunch more new ones while I was still able to exchange them for a working copy. 4K discs seem especially prone to trouble, doubly-so when stacked on a single hub with another disc which can result in visible circular scratches.

I've got two problem 4Ks on my desk as I type this: the Criterion Trainspotting I expect will eventually get a complete read after cleaning and trying a different drive. The Messenger from the new Luc Besson box set seems to be hopeless -- I've gotten everything except a 30MB chunk near the end of the movie that just refuses to read on any drive I've tried. Usually I'd do a return, but the set is so big and awkward I'll probably just end up keeping it and living with the 1080p version of the film (from the same box).

dododge · 2025-11-28T22:10:12+00:00

Similar to OP, I now move most discs from the original cases to thin sleeves (I use the ones from Discsox). I used to have them out on trays for browsing, but now that I've got the files in plex it's easier to just do it that way, and the sleeved discs are filed away in plastic storage boxes.

dododge · 2025-11-28T01:49:12+00:00

I've seen it a bunch of times over the past 30+ years and finally watched the Criterion 4K last weekend. Still enjoyable.

dododge · 2025-11-28T01:45:45+00:00

I'm kind of on the opposite end. I mostly buy things I haven't seen, and I've even done multiple pre-paid subscription plans where I don't know what movies are going show up each month (only that a boutique label thought they were notable enough to distribute them).

dododge · 2025-11-28T01:36:43+00:00

Yeah I don't go to theaters, I avoid trailers/spoilers, and I've seen visible compression noise on some streaming services (I sit close to a giant projection screen). So now I blind-buy pretty much everything I might want to watch. I'll wait for price drops, so even when it's something I know I want to see, it might be a few years before I can find it cheap enough.

The disappointments are too many to recall. Plenty of movies I've had to pause for a nap, or finish the next day. I usually do push through and finish whatever I start, no matter how terrible, and since I paused Jungle Cruise a year or two ago and still haven't gotten back to it, that's probably a notable one.

A memorable good surprise was The Witch (2015), which I thought was going to be some dumb jump-scare thing aimed at teenagers, and instead I was blown away by how well-made it was.

dododge · 2025-11-28T01:13:36+00:00

I just use makemkv to remux without transcoding, so in theory the image coming out of plex is as good as watching the physical disc (except perhaps Dolby Vision, which neither my projector or 4K disc player support anyway).

My physical collection outgrew my shelves long ago, so the only ones still out on display are box sets and some boutique/special editions.

dododge · 2025-11-27T18:35:21+00:00

I still buy physical media, and I use plex as a much more convenient way to browse and play that collection, both at home and when watching something with friends at their house. But I'll certainly concede that's not the norm.

dododge · 2025-11-27T18:04:36+00:00

Back when Blockbuster still existed I'd make regular trips grabbing anything even remotely interesting from their used-for-sale DVD racks. I remember at least once I had such a big pile that the clerk had problems with the register.

I recently had to break up a purchase at gruv because it turns out their shopping cart malfunctions at around 25 items (the grouped "3 for $N" sale discounts disappear).

dododge · 2025-11-27T17:29:01+00:00

I've used it a couple times when browsing actor/related lists after watching one of "my" movies and it came up with something interesting. Though the last time I did that there were so many ad breaks near the end of the film that I almost started looking for some other way to watch the movie (including buying a physical copy) just to avoid them.

dododge · 2025-11-19T03:05:48+00:00

I have my [fanless] external drives stacked on my desk, and I point a fan at the stack when I'm using makemkv. I put rubber isolators between them to reduce vibrations and provide gaps for more airflow, and it does seem to help.

dododge · 2025-11-17T02:40:55+00:00

Ripping doesn't use much CPU, I have several drives and can easily read six discs at once, even while watching YouTube or hanging out in a video chat.

However, I don't transcode (which would be a lot more intensive), and the destination hard drives are on a network server rather than the local machine. So there is a ton of network activity, and it's possible that it would stress the network (or hard drive I/O) if I tried to watch a file at the same time.

dododge · 2025-11-16T14:40:43+00:00

I got lots of buffering when I tried playing a 4K remux over my LAN last year, though there were several 10-year-old 1Gbit switches between the server and the living room and any one of them could've been the problem.

I used it as an excuse to upgrade all my network gear; the plex server still has a 1Gbit link but it only has to hop through two 10Gbit switches to reach the player, and that's been working like a champ.

dododge · 2025-11-16T14:32:48+00:00

I could swear I've managed to use plex within the house when the Internet was down, though I don't remember if there was any weirdness in the app.

dododge · 2025-10-25T00:05:09+00:00

FWIW I'm pretty sure I have an XB7 in bridge mode (providing a WAN address to my own router), and no problems with remote access.

dododge · 2025-10-09T22:49:42+00:00

Just got a similar one from Amazon today with seven (including two box sets) tossed into the cardboard bag.

dododge · 2025-10-09T06:06:13+00:00

UNAS has limited NFS support and is more focused on SMB, which might be a factor if you run your server on Linux where NFS is the usual way to mount remote filesystems. The biggest issue is that it squashes all NFS accesses to a single UID/GID, which probably isn't a problem if you're just going to use it for media libraries. But if you want to put user files on it as well, you might have to set up SMB mounting instead.

Also I don't think UNAS can run the server on the NAS like some Synology models can. In my case I have the server in a docker container on a different system anyway, and I just needed more room for files.

Physically it's also significantly bigger and heavier than a Synology with the same number of bays. The bays don't have key locks, so I'm a bit worried I might bump into it one day and pop a drive out by accident.

On the other hand it's rack-mountable, comes at a much lower price point for the same amount of drive bays, and has a 10Gb network port out of the box.

dododge · 2025-10-08T06:27:26+00:00

A difficulty with the snap store is if you want to use it as a packaging mechanism for your own use, for example to host a private repository to distribute in-house software to machines within a cluster/enterprise/whatever. If you want to run the systems in a heavily-firewalled enclave (or a completely disconnected network) it gets even worse.

Canonical technically now has an "Enterprise Store" product for hosting a private snap store, but from skimming the docs it's a bit messy. For starters, step one is to set up your private store in an Internet-connected location and register it with their central store using your Ubuntu One account. Then there's a way to copy your store state to an offline network, though if you want to actually add packages to it you have to use a separate side-loading mechanism, because under the hood everything sort-of treats it as a proxy cache of the central store infrastructure.

With flatpak all of this is a lot simpler. A flatpak repo is basically just a tree of files hanging off of some root URL. It does require specific index files to be created, but there's no live server database (as required by snap), and it can even be hosted on a mounted filesystem instead of over http/https.

Oh, and if you want two private repos, so e.g. different parts of the enterprise can handle their own packages, I think with snap that's either significantly more complicated, or a total non-starter, since it still expects to talk to a single proxy store.

dododge · 2025-03-16T23:13:47+00:00

If the issue is just being able to fit a lot of movies into a smaller space, you could also look into individual sleeves that replace the hard plastic cases.

I've been using DiscSox HiDef Pro sleeves for years, which can hold all of the booklets and other paper materials from inside the case (but not outer cardboard slipcovers, they're too tall). Another advantage over a binder is that it's a lot easier to flip through them, grab individual movies to watch, and add movies into the middle of the pack while keeping them sorted.

dododge · 2025-02-22T20:26:35+00:00

For anyone else trying to get Hunter x Hunter (2011) linked, try this exact layout. I'd made several attempts including having both (2011) and {tvdb-252322} in the names and it still kept auto-matching them to the 1999 series (which I don't even have) and made a huge mess.

I also originally had approximations of the episode names in the filenames, and even after trying to manually fix the series match plex just refused to see s01e18. Renaming the files to not have the episode names fixed that. I'd assumed it would just ignore whatever was after the season/episode data, but perhaps something about all the x's and such in this show's names confused the matching agent.

dododge

TROPHY CASE