Unnecessary. It adds compatibility with another service. I looked into it a few weeks ago. I forget the details, but I looked into this and thought, oh I’ll never need that. The $5.99 gives you all the features you need for all devices.
Navidrome looks like good stuff. If I ever move off of Plex, I’ll absolutely be looking at it. I’m running macOS, but my goal is to buy a gently used Windows PC from a business or something (like they couldn’t upgrade it to Windows 11 or whatever’s after that) and replace Windows with Linux, and use it as a server. My Mac (M2 Pro, 16GB RAM) is more than enough machine to run multiple servers, but I’d rather do that with a dedicated machine running some *nix that I can terminal into from the Mac. Navidrome does run on macOS with minor tweaking that is not above my skill level, but when I set up the server I’ll be looking real hard at alternatives.
Definitely more advanced than what I do! I’ve also been collecting for a long time, and I’ve just been storing the media. I went from Windows/x86-64 to Mac/ARM64 a few years back, and I have kinda limited options that way. I would have just gone to Linux if my computers didn’t die, but at the time, Apple made sense.
I do Apple Music, but, that doesn’t answer the question. I also self-host my music via a Plex server. I got Plex Pass for well under $100 on sale years and years ago. Much harder to recommend now. Plexamp is awesome for music, and I also use Prologue (iOS app) for audiobooks hosted on Plex.
For tagging, I use Mp3Tag and tag manually. It was free on Windows, but the guy wants $30 for it on Mac. It’s a long story as to why, but after he was kind enough to explain it to me… I paid the man. (For my part, I’d used it for free for many years and I got a lot of miles out of it, and still do, and it’s a good, well maintained app from a solo developer.) There are free alternatives. Not so many good ones on Mac (part of why I paid). For album art, I get them from Apple using this handy site (not mine): https://bendodson.com/projects/itunes-artwork-finder/ — you can use 600px or you can use either 2000px or 3000px, I forget which. I’m good with 600px. I think Apple uses the smaller size for phones and the bigger one for TVs and Macs (especially as iMacs have 5K screens now).
My library might also not be as big as yours is. Plex says I have 14,462 tracks indexed. Maybe those are rookie numbers, I dunno. I pretty much have everything I want. All I’d really want now is to take my Apple Music playlists and download them to m4a 192k or similar. I have a few decade playlists that are like 500-600 songs each (80s, 90s, and 00s).
Install Steam OS on a Linux PC. The Steam Machine is overpriced and mid range. It’s okay for beginners. Members of a Linux gaming comm can probably do better.
Note that presently, Steam OS is only for AMD builds. If you have Intel and/or Nvidia, you’ll need to wait. Support for those is coming soon.
Yeah, I kinda wish the Xbox One didn’t exist, too. I get what you’re saying though, that stripped-down version of Windows isn’t something you can get outside the console. Still, you not being able to use it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s still a fair thing to test against. Windows as a consumer grade OS isn’t really meant for gaming. Xbox is Windows stripped down to what’s needed for gaming. You can configure Linux to strip down for gaming, so why not compare apples to apples?
Ostensibly, the one with less overhead. Part of the dream of DirectX was a lite statement that could focus on gaming — that ultimately became Xbox. So look at an Xbox One (not Series!) and run Linux on similar hardware (no SSD!) and see if you can beat it. I think it can be done but I’m not sure.
Looked into this, it looks awesome. Plex is meeting my needs and I own a Plex Pass, but if I didn’t, I’d probably be running this. The server works on Macs, too. Not all of them do.