s38b35M5

+1 for simple. Something you don’t need to host.

And DPI relies on endpoints using their CA and MiTM certificate. It’s not like it can happen without your knowledge (at least on personal devices). After implementing DPI on multiple different firewall devices on home and enterprise networks, it’s a fairly deliberate setup process on the endpoint. Not a, “they can listen in whenever they want,” scenario.

But fuck this bot 🤖

That’s not Linux, though; that’s docker.

Maybe now. .NET wasn’t always open, used to be Windows-only, was buggy, version-dependent (but not as bad as the jre could be; true), and had (still has) poor resource-management. I think you’re talking about .NETCore.

That said, I wasn’t commenting on the code viability (I’m not a professional developer) so much as the support overhead required (back when I worked support) for the different versions of .NET, especially when MS stopped including v3.5 in Windows except by using “features and programs” or downloading and installing it manually.

Many of us started running Windows Server and endpoints with Cisco PIX firewall (am I showing my age here?) but in my case, the cost and substandard tools turned me away. I was running A DLNA server and using WDS (yes, very overkill for home, but fun to learn for work), but then I found TrueNAS (then called FreeNAS) running on BSD. I now run a simple share from there and Kodi on my (Linux and Android) user endpoints. I don’t bother with imaging anymore, and use dd for backups to my NAS. My Firewall runs OPNSense (BSD) and I run OpenWRT on two TrendNet WAPs.

I’ll never go back to MS. It’s just not a welcoming platform from my perspective. Don’t even get me started on .NET or the various and sundry “redistributables” constantly required by every tool you try to use.

my distaste for MS grew

This is a natural progression. Inescapable.

Plex stopped being useful to me in 2019. At the time I had only about 300 movies and the same number of TV episodes. The database kept getting corrupt, causing long load times of video info pages, or perpetual spinning progress indicator. After fixing the database (and losing all watch metadata each time) three times in one year, I moved to a plain file share served from the NAS with Kodi running on my Nvidia Shield.

In seven years, Kodi’s local DB has never corrupted. I now have 900+ movies and 2500 TV episodes. I can handle any file type, any video CODEC, can play thousands of games from the internet game library. The DB can be easily backed up and imported into a new install if needed.

And the best part? I didn’t pay anyone to access any of the media I own, and no corpo gets access to my library or watch history.

Forget Plex.

I completely agree. I thought Plex would be fast in the collective rearview mirror as soon as they started forcing connections to their servers, pay-walling, etc. I also had issues with the database corrupting and causing huge slowdowns. I spent days trying and failing to preserve my ratings, watch data, etc.

In the end, I switched to a much simpler setup of an NFS/CIFS share accessed by Kodi on my Nvidia Shield TV. If Kodi chokes (happened once since 2017), I can just wipe the app and/or reinstall and then import the local metadata (XML or NFO IIRC). That takes about five minutes. It just works. Kodi also gives me access to the IAGL, so that’s a huge plus.