I to have multi tiered backups for my laptops and do regular restores to validate them. Same for my parents and all my non technical family and friends. Its amazing that big companies mess this up since everyone does it. It’s just so cheap and easy to do. /s

Same. I’m kinda half migrated running both but plex is convenient and (for me) still free.

When plex initially exploded in popularity, the alternatives required like manual xml config, constant babying the database, and generally barely worked.

Plex had apps on all the devices from wii to your phone and just worked. There was also lots of promises of privacy, you owning your data, segregating accounts to coordinating direct access, etc etc. It was almost a no brainer because there was no alternative that could deliver that experience.

Now is very different. The vibes at plex are very different, the world is a lot more hostile to privacy, and there are open source alternatives that get very close to the same experience.

So for a lot of people, yeah, plex doesn’t make sense anymore.

Yeah I was wanting more. This looks like things that support development. Being open-source, a lot of developers have day jobs elsewhere so kinda makes sense the line items for paying them might be small.

Was this coming from within the kernel community?

That’s the joke!

Got a notice just yesterday that my browser wasn’t supported on a site and I needed the latest version of chrome. Luckily chromium fooled it. So… Chrome is still the IE of the modern web.

“zsh: regedit: command not found…” I use arch btw. 😂

I don’t think that’s actually true. Most route traffic through malware/protection software which would be bypassed by split vpns.

There are also a number of attacks that target this sort of VPN setup so it’s my understanding it’s generally not a good idea.

Sounds like Debian is probably your goto based on experience you stated. KISS to start.

My advice is choose something as stable as your requirements allow. Debian, Ubuntu LTS, etc. It can be fun to try new things but generally your homelab stuff you just want to work and spending a ton of time fixing broken updates isn’t the fun part.

Similar to above, isolate and guard your data from your OS and programs. It lets you be flexible to trying some new things if you want. But if things go bad, reinstalling a different OS is easy. remount your JBOD or NAS or what ever and you’re back rolling. Backing up and transferring tons of files sucks and recovering them is worse.

Declarative infrastructure can be your friend. Ansible, docker compose, etc. Again, when things go bad, getting things back up is that much quicker and you can keep doing the fun stuff not spend your weekend finding that old blog post, figuring out that weird ai promp, what ever .