So yeah, “supported” - I’m not even sure what I mean by that, so it gets some friendly quotes.
Just been reading this…
And it states that hardware-accelerated streaming is only officially supported on Linux if you’re using 64-bit Ubuntu 16.04 on-wards or Fedora 26 or later.
At the moment my little Intel NUC (with i5-6260U and Iris 540) is great at hardware acceleration and the only thing it does is run PMS on top of a basic installation of Debian 8. I chose to have a separate box for the task on purpose - if Plex Inc. themselves had launched a pre-installed PMS NUC… I’d be one of those people to have bought one. But I digress… the main point being is, I treat this NUC as though it was an unofficial physical “Plex Media Server Appliance”.
I’ll be re-installing it soon and I’m faced with the choice of OS again. Normally I use Debian for everything, but since this literally only does this one task (and I want to continue to view it as a single purpose ‘Appliance’) then I’m not fussed about what OS. So I’m prepared to use “64-bit Ubuntu (16.04 or later)” as it states in the above article.
So few questions…
Is Plex Inc. saying 16.04 onwards to mean LTS versions stating with 16.04 onwards, or any version?
If I use the ‘snap’ package (EUGH!) on either regular Ubuntu or Ubuntu Core… then will that do the hardware-accelerated streaming out of the box? Or would it suffer in the same way the docker container would?.. UPDATE: I’m starting to see on other threads that this package isn’t getting the updates on time and perhaps Plex Inc. doesn’t consider it to be official anyway.
What the heck do you mean by “supported” in that article anyway? AFAIK the only place I can get support (i’m a lifetime subscriber by the way) is via this forum anyway, which would likely assist me just as equally as if I ran Debian or Ubuntu anyway… this whole “supported” thing would make more sense if you’re saying I can literally log a ticket with a Plex Inc. engineer to look into an issue for me directly!?
Thanks in advance,
p.s. My talking about using Ubuntu or Snaps (in any form) for server purposes should not be construed as condoning anyone thinking about the same (as I think Ubuntu on servers suck, as do snap packages)
I’m already intimately aware of what is going on the Linux packaging debacle, the relationship between Debian and Ubuntu and lastly the “supported” status of each Ubuntu version.
Sorry to be blunt about this, but none of what you’ve said speaks to the questions I have raised. I wouldn’t want someone else reading this to think I’ve had even a partial reply to what was raised.
After looking at this post though (and they’d desperately like an official reply on their matters too)… Please update plex on snap
I’m likely to steer clear of snaps (never liked them anyway), likely just load Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (selecting no package sets on the task selection screen - for a truely minimal install) and use the official .deb packages from plex.tv.
So it’d still be nice to get the answers to all 4 questions… but I’m now mostly interested in the 4th. What exactly does the article mean by “supported” when all we have is this forum? In other words, if I load on Debian 9 rather than Ubuntu 18.04 - what have I lost? Does it just mean the devs are only testing hardware-accelerated streaming on 64-bit Ubuntu 16.04 LTS systems? In which case, does ‘onwards’ include 18.04? or the versions inbetween/since? In terms of what they’ve tested against? All seems very vague.
I run a late model NUC with Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS. It works great. You can do either a headless server or desktop install. I have no issues with HW transcoding using the QSV ASIC.
I am planning for it to be a long term appliance for at least 5 to 10 years. It will ultimately be new HW requirements or HW failure that will force major HW or OS upgrades. I try to practice and endorse the KISS principle.
My replies are not official but I will try to best answer your questons.
14.04.5 LTS until April 2019 using PMS 1.14.1.5488
16.04 LTS and 18.04 LTS through to the Canonical published EOL date
Intermediates such as 18.10 and 19.04 through to the Canonical published EOL date
It can be since Canonical is talking LTS of 10 years but then you have to deal with snap
Not positive on this since I myself have not tried to do this yet. Its on my personal to-do list to try this with Plex Media Player. For PMS, the snap package does seem to lag behind the traditonal .deb package.
I will leave this question to a Plex employee to answer.
Well we both know the hardware-acceleration streaming does work with other distributions. So when you’re saying ‘designed to work’ with specific distributions… but trying not to confuse people with support (as in assistance) - then perhaps the words tested against might make more sense.
My two cents (or pence in my case) anyway.
Is there a reason Debian has been excluded from the testing? but at the same time ‘Debian’ is listed against the .deb files available for download from plex.tv? It’s almost like Plex overall is tested against Debian… but the hardware-accelerated streaming is not? Perhaps something to do with Ubuntu using newer kernels with newer video drivers available?
(as I think Ubuntu on servers suck, as do snap packages)
