Between Ubuntu and Windows 10, which is the better OS to run the PMS? I’ve been on Windows 10 for years without issue but either my hardware has become a problem or the software because we can’t play movies with subtitles anymore, it just fails. I was thinking of swapping drives with a machine running Ubuntu but it got me wondering if I should maybe just change the OS out as well to Ubuntu?
Is anyone using Ubuntu for the OS on their Plex Server? If so, how is the performance?
There are people that swear by Linux. That said, use whatever you’re comfortable with. Linux has a high learning curve with permissions things, network drive oddities, and any command line syntax that you might need.
I’ve resigned to the fact that I’ll be switching to Linux whenever I can’t get Windows Server to work on my hardware. I refuse to use Windows 10/11 due to the bloat auto-install software, forced software updates, and ads. Windows Server is at least clean, but it’s hardware support isn’t as good as retail.
Thanks for the fast reply, you bring up another question! My current set up is my PMS is on a machine running Windows 10 and my movies and shows are on a Windows 2008 R2 server. It almost sounds like you prefer to use a Windows server OS for the PMS?
Yeah it’s rock solid as far as I have ever experienced. Hyper-V is great for spinning up VMs; easy to copy templates. I have a set of Thunderbolt storage arrays as my media storage; over 200TB using Stablebit Drivepool with Snapraid.
Currently on Windows Server 2022. Graphic card support is one consideration; whether GPU transcoding works or not on it. Nvidia is pretty successful.
Whichever OS you are comportable with using and administrating is best for you.
Linux has indeed a slight advantage when it comes to hardware accelerated tone mapping of HDR to SDR videos.
But that is of no use if you cannot find your way on Linux (nor the willingness to deep dive into it. Which is understandable as Linux has a steep learning curve).
I think at best you can get various “testimonies”… so here’s mine. Plex user for a very very very very very long time. I’ve gone through 3 Plex Media physical servers. Never lost an item, never had much issue (except for those few times when there were bugs being worked on). Plex server is on 24/7. Has always run openSUSE. That “version” is now openSUSE Leap 15.5, but it’s survived all upgrades, etc.
I was in a passionate conversation on the Plex reddit, where someone was swearing that you needed 16G of memory if you used Windows, which I found ridiculous, but they kept doubling down on that. IMHO, if that’s the case, nobody should use Plex on Windows. IMHO, that person may have been smoking something… But, they were adamant. They said otherwise it would fall over fairly quickly. shrug
Thanks everyone for the replies, you’ve definitely given me great options and opinions! I might have to just build one up on the mentioned platforms and see what works before moving off the current set up
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