its kinda crazy having your own personal netflix, right?
i originally used it so my kids could watch cartoons in school
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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You used it for what?!? Why the heck would you let your kids watch cartoons in school?
cuz my kids are awesome, and most of the schools sucked. its cool, they were consistently the best performers.
they earned being treated like they might some day be adults.
Didn't you want them to hang out with their friends instead of watching cartoons during the day? Or maybe make friends?
I wouldn't discount how having that access to cartoons probably made them more friends on its own.
School may have been a long time ago for some of us, but I don't think buddying up with the kids who could get you access to things has ever fallen out of style.
I'm pretty sure a lot of research shows that limiting screen time for kids is a good thing.
I definitely know that not having access to screens all the time made me have stronger social skills in school than I would've had staring at cartoons every chance I got. Being on the computer from the moment I got home was sure as hell bad enough. Once I started skateboarding, my social life took off much faster. Being out, no screens, in a social context where people are just being offline people.
When I was in school, we talked. And when we didn't talk, we just sat, bored, together. It was bonding in a way that the brain needs. You need to just sit in silence with someone and be bored together sometimes, man. Boredom feeds creativity. We were also walking around the halls, taking walks outside, going out and touching grass, getting some sun. This was even in high school.
Sure as fuck wouldn't have done that if I could watch shows and doom scroll every break.
I'm glad they're banning phones in schools here soon. Gonna be good for learning/concentration, and creativity. E-learning is awful for learning, and I can't imagine leasure-time with phones and other devices help with concentration either, even if they "earned it".
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its kinda crazy having your own personal netflix, right?
It truly is!
Yeah, I keep a “Kids” profile on my Plex/Jellyfin server, specifically so I can throw Bluey, Mr Rogers Neighborhood, Miss Rachel, etc on and not worry about it. Elsagate (which is still a big problem) means you can’t just put on YouTube Kids and expect auto-played content to stay safe. But with my server, running solely on content I have curated, I know that everything in that “Kids” profile is going to be safe.
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Personally, I think that installing it on a bare metal Windows Server system is quite an achievement.
I have it installed using docker compose on Linux. So my setup is rather unspectacular.
Hey you can always set up GPU rendering and like a tmpfs transcoding cache volume if you want your compose to look a little more complicated
tmpfs is overkill. I just use a crappy old 128G SSD and it's still way faster than needed for all of my transcodes combined.
Anyway just my 2 cents.
Frequent write/deletes of so much data would be rough on my hdds, and I've got a couple hundred gigs of RAM, why not tmpfs it?
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Windows can run docker, so there's versions of most things that will run on windows.
JellyFin has a native windows version.
Yes, but not everything does. But luckily, Docker exists on Windows. So anything that runs on Docker can be run on Windows.
Given, Docker’s implementation on Windows is… Uhh… Not Great^TM^. Because it’s basically using WSL to trick Windows into supporting a Linux file system. So it has some quirks. But it does technically work.
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Time to setup an arr stack.
Just when you think you've got all the arrs you need, you find another that could benefit your stack.
And (jelly)seer !
I know this is probably “the usual” for everyone here, but I’m genuinely excited that I managed to get it all running smoothly.
Heh! Don't let anyone dampen your enthusiasm. It feels great when I am toiling away at something and finally all the pieces click together. I might have to walk away a few times and put the project on hold, but I keep whacking away at it. When it does work, it's always a childish joy that comes over me and always gets a fist-pump.
What equipment are you running that Windows Server on?
Right now its a Thinkpad T480 with 64G ram and 1tb ssd. If it turns out we use Jellyfin enough I plan to get something more powerful for it.
Honestly thats already plenty - 8th gen intel igpu is pretty solid, about the only reason to change from that is going to be native AV1 (enc/dec added at meteor lake, tiger lake for dec only).
My setup is basically the same chip thats in my t480, but in a lenovo tiny. Family and friends make use of it, and it doesn't break a sweat with 6 streams going.
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64g of ram is pretty darn powerful already!
Nice! Rock on with yo' bad self.
Congratulations! I’ve been using Jellyfin for several years now and the quality has consistently improved. It’s a great tool.
Jellyfin is great! Glad you got it up and running!
How do you like that?
Thanks, I hate it.
lmao harsh but fair
Asking out of curiosity: is there a specific reason you're running Windows on your server? I used to do the same on my home servers because that's what we used to have at work, and I wanted to learn and test some stuff. But it was a difficult road, to put it mildly. Simple things, like getting Docker autostart on boot seemed almost impossible. At some point I just gave up and switched to Linux.
I use Windows Server because that's what I know. Though I am curious to learn other OSes when I have more time. I don't use docker so that's really not a problem for now.
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My journey began with windows, Jellyfin, and qbit. Nice you have done the same! Only reason I switched to Linux is because I wanted servers and hated unraid
I’m always going to say Windows is too heavy to be placed in a server environment, simply wasn’t designed for it, but congrats nonetheless.
Windows server
too heavy to be placed in a server environment
wasn’t designed for it
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Congrats on your successful install! It feels good to take control of your media, doesn't it? I found it a great project for growing my confidence in deploying my own services. Happy hosting!
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