Home server

[Abhi]

You have photos, movies, TV shows, music and whatnot. Perhaps you want to share them all across your local network. Or even try to access it when you are not at home. A home server can help in such cases. Have you ever tried ? How did you make it work ?

 

[admin]

I have tried once. I wanted to do it because I will be away from home. That didn't go well. But I am thankful that it failed. It is just like exposing your PC to the world ( not that dangerous, but still ). The whole setup worked fine locally though. Within the home network it was fine.

 

[Abhi]

Can't we use Kodi as a media server software ? They are very famous.

Or something Open Media Vault. Does it come with a media server module ?

 

[admin]

While Kodi has some features that will work like a home server, it is not much of a server at all. Kodi is as they advertise is mainly a video player which has some very famous addons and the ability to download a wide range of cover art.

 

[Abhi]

Ubuntu 19.10 has some built-in media server option. Read that it was buggy.

What are the other options ?

 

[admin]

I heard that too. There was an article somewhere about that.

You can simply install Ubuntu and add the bells and whistles to your server. It is possible that the setup is resource hungry and might need some cooling as well.

 

[Abhi]

I would prefer a full GUI based option. Something more vibrant and has lots of options to customize. But I guess that needs a more powerful CPU.

And multiple device support too. ie, access from Android devices as well.

 

[admin]

I have seen article with a full list of media server options. It says

[*]1. Plex
[*]2. Jellyfin
[*]3. OpenFLIXR
[*]4. LibreElec
[*]5. Kodi
[*]6. Gerbera
[*]7. Universal Media Server
[*]8. Open Source Media Center
[*]9. Red5 Media Server