I can’t say there was anything that I really disliked about it, I actually really liked the app overall but I’ve been using Plexamp since basically the first public release so that just feels a bit more familiar. Plus I heavily use the sonic analysis features which I don’t believe exist outside of plexamp (please someone tell me if I’m wrong here).

Completely agree. I paid for Symfonium after seeing a lot of people on here raving about it but I still ended up back with Plexamp. I’d be curious to hear what people find other apps do better than plexamp.

If you have music on your server, I’d strongly recommend checking it out. I believe it was started as a side project by the Plex devs and it’s a way better music player than the one built into the Plex apps.

You’re 100% correct. I always find it funny how hardcore some people are with jellyfin vs Plex. I’ll probably end up getting downvotes on this but imo Plex is way simpler to setup and keep running, and as a lifetime pass owner, I’ve very rarely felt like my experience has been deteriorated by any of the changes that the jellyfin crowd freaks out about. Plus plexamp is honestly such a great music player. I’ll happily keep running Plex for the foreseeable future.

Other than ZFS as someone mentioned already, they also offer dual drive parity now. IMO it’s a good balance to also allow a very flexible and easily expandable array.

Definitely nothing wrong with that!!

What made you go with a custom solution instead of something like home assistant?

I work in emergency management but I’ve always been interested in tech as a hobby. That led me to start self-hosting Plex on my desktop about 6-7 years ago. Now I’ve got a dedicated machine running unraid with about 20 to 30 different docker services.

I really enjoy being able to figure out how to setup a service and then being able to be fully in control of how it works. Beyond just enjoying tinkering with the system to learn, I enjoy being able to troubleshoot and fix problems without relying on large companies.

As others have pointed out, CloudFlare doesn’t sell .ca domain names due to the ownership restrictions applied by CIRA. I’ve personally used Web Hosting Canada (WHC.ca) for many years, including their hosting for a while. I also have a couple of domains with Register.ca.

I then use DuckDNS for dynamic updates and the free tier of CloudFlare for security certificates and some simple access rules.

Seconding Zotero. I truly don’t know how I would be able to keep track of all the research I read through and reference. I especially love that I can highlight passages and attach notes to each entry right inside the desktop app.

The browser connector is also super handy for quickly adding papers to read-through at a later date.

Highly recommend cases by Fractal.

For self hosting I’d recommend either one of the Meshify 2 or Define 7, depending on local price and your specific needs. I personally went with the Meshify 2 XL and was blown away by the quality of the case. It’s built well and allows for a variety of configurations. It also makes maintenance very easy as the filters and side panels can all be removed without any tool to handle dust build up.

Seconding the recommendation for FreshRSS, it’s the one I ended up hosting when I looked into this a while back and it’s been really great. Takes a minute to get everything setup, especially if you want to have different settings for different types of feeds, but once it’s all set it’s perfect (for my needs at least).

I’ve also got it setup with my domain so I can access the feed from anywhere and that’s been one of my favourite features.

Personally I use it for a couple services that would be difficult to run separately (ie: deemix + lidarr). I’m also planning on moving all of my services with databases over to compose. I do lose a couple other QOL features but I still prefer this approach to start/stop all related containers instead of manually having to close each one.

That’s also because a lot of mods used the API to detect bots and other malicious users. These tools were removed so even if the mods didn’t leave, they are now significantly less effective.

I think there’s a decent chance it will. At the bare minimum, it already feels much better to me than voat ever did.

And when we are troubleshooting, we’ll be searching “crackpipe _____”… I can definitely think of a few scenarios where that’ll return very different results than expected.

Completely agree, having a memorable name is important but that doesn’t mean the name should be a joke.