uxellodunum

Already moved my community to Matrix/Element last year. Haven't looked back.

I'm assuming you're just running bare-metal, in which case no GPU passthrough would be needed. From what you've mentioned, everything seems about right so not much more to say - But on the UI department I do agree most apps could use some polish. I'd really recommend you try to replicate, get the logs, and forward them either to the Jellyfin Forums or their troubleshooting Matrix room (or both!), as people are generally quite helpful. Best of luck!

Switch to GrapheneOS with a profile for sandboxed GServices. There's a github repo tracking banking app compatibility on GrapheneOS(GrapheneOS is quite secure while some banking apps require phones to be LESS secure) so check that first.

You mention about 3 different issues, but files not playing is definitely a config/file issue, not a Jellyfin issue. I've thrown at it pretty much any standard format and it plays it fine. Any specific format and/or codec you're trying to play? For instance AV1 files play just fine on Jellyfin, but if the hardware doesn't support hardware decoding (which is the case foe my Nvidia Shield) it won't play well at all.

Regarding Jellyfin's themes, not saying no to some improvements, but what stops you(or others) from using it?

I personally use Jellyfin for multiple hours a day (as do friends and family, with zero complaints), almost every day and it plays my media on literally any platform (including remotely), but I don't find myself looking at Jellyfin per se for any large amount of that time - It's easy to navigate which from a UX perspective generally trumps looks when it comes to these things. I like how it looks as it's functional and easy to get to the media you want whilst showing all the nice metadata (images, sinopses, etc). What's missing?

Been using Jellyfin to share media with family and friends, locally and remotely, for a couple years. Very happy and can recommend.

No.

If by Media Player you mean Jellyfin Media Player, assuming Windows from your previous post, then yes. You'll find a cache folder somewhere under %AppData% (User Folder/AppData/(...)) Can't remember the exact path as I don't use Windows regularly, but know it's there.

Self-hosted Matrix.

It still needs polish, but it's on a good path. Meanwhile others are centralized by a single authority with an easy target painted on them for government coercion along with multiple other attack surfaces, and even information easily traced to PII. Also, not everything is encrypted. A lot of metadata is left out of E2EE. And those servers/providers have that data.

By contrast, a drop in the ocean is far more likely to not be targetted from the outset, making pretty much any matrix server (potentially with the exception of the matrix.org one, but it's ok to treat it as a demo anyway) a really good choice in that sense.

Ah I see. Did you change the lobby URL in the config file? There's a config file with a lobby URL, you need to change it to point to the correct lobby where servers will show. Or is that what you with the changing the default server?

Edit: Just checking, are you running at least version 2.65? Also, I mentioned changing the config file, I've just been reminded the file is downloaded separately and then just replaced, no need to change it. I'll DM the unofficial "official" guide from the forums.

LineageOS is a good step in the right direction GrapheneOS is the best, but obvously restricted to Pixela device due to their hardware.

I'm also on Linux. Ensure you have docker and docker-compose installed. IIRC you also need the windows server files# . I'll get back to you with my server compose file.

Not strictly the same, but one of the most amazing feats to me in this topic was done by the Sacred community over at DarkMatters.

Apoligies for the wall of text, but I consider it worth a read.

Sacred 2 in particular never had its server code open sourced, leaked, or anything of the like as the studio went bankrupt before anything could happen, this was around 2010.

Over the course of a decade a few volunteer devs would pick up a project where using tools like wireshark etc they'd essentially sniff traffic sent by a client attempting connection to a server that didn't exist, and using this, devs would literally try to GUESS what a server would respond, and what a client expected, essentially trying to build out the backend infrastructure from SCRATCH.

Fast forward to 2020 or so and progress was still being made, not only that but things were beginning to actually take shape. In 2021 (IIRC) one dev in particular had the general frame of a working server and continued to work on it. Fast-forward and since 2022-23, you're able to run both a LOBBY for multiple servers and an actual GAME SERVER yourself, self-hosted and code is open.

I've ran a couple servers using docker since, where I played with friends, and being able to replay that childhood game, with friends, one I thought I'd never be able to share the experience for, is a dream come true.

Another neat thing is that it was reverse-engineered in windows, but the docker containers literally run WINE to translate windows calls to Linux and it just works.

Knowing I'm able to in 2,5,10,30 years pick this up, and not only that, but replay with friends means this work of art has a great chance at preservation.

If you're into power metal, there's a band called Blind Guardian, they not only did they the main theme for the game, but the band's members have an entire quest-line in-game that culminates with an in-game concert. Again, a work of art worth preserving, and now, it can be shared.