[Telaneo]

> It's also free.

Only if you don't care about your time or if your media collection is tiny.

Don't get me wrong, I love my 20 TB hard drives full of Linux ISOs, but it's a hard sell on anyone who doesn't have 'dicking about with computers' as their hobby. Regular old piracy using torrents has been a easier sell in my experience, once you can get over the hurdle of getting someone familiar with using a torrent client and the relevant search bar. Popcorn Time back in the day made that hurdle trivial. Getting people to use Jellyfin isn't hard. Getting someone to be the family/friend group Jellyfin sysadmin is a significantly tougher sell.

Pihole and the like is an easier sell, since it can be mostly set and forget, but it's not free unless you already have a computer which isn't doing anything, and even if you do, that computer isn't guaranteed to be one which has near-zero running costs when you factor in electricity.

The same sorts of problems apply to most things you can self-host.

[SchemaLoad]

I don't think many advice non tech people to get in to self hosting, but there are a lot of people who do enjoy messing with computers who these articles are marketing to.

The average user will only self host when it's a managed box they plug in and it just works. Like how Apple/Google home automation works. Maybe we will see managed products for photo / file syncing pop up.

[Telaneo]

> I don't think many advice non tech people to get in to self hosting, but there are a lot of people who do enjoy messing with computers who these articles are marketing to.

I agree, but even I, someone who does have this as a hobby and does self-host a few things, have my limits for the same reasons that the casuals do. Even when I have a computer that I can use for one more purpose, I rarely do that unless I know it will be set and forget, since having one more thing to deal with in my already overburdened life is a hard sell.

> The average user will only self host when it's a managed box they plug in and it just works. Like how Apple/Google home automation works. Maybe we will see managed products for photo / file syncing pop up.

Very true. I do hope some products like that will appear, but the workflow and UX will have to be damn near perfect, something which home automation often isn't (unless you use Home Assisant and thus have it as a hobby. Funny how that works).

[SchemaLoad]

I have the ikea home hub and it basically is maintanance free. There is no need or even a UI for updating/managing/reinstalling the OS. It just works and has been just working for years.

For other systems like photos and file storage the main complication would be around backups which fall back on the user. If your home automation hub dies, you just chuck a new one in and re-pair your lights. If your photo server drives die it's a disaster. Realistically you'd want to have a backup copy on the cloud, which would lead many casual users to wonder what the point of even hosting the server is if you still need to pay for the cloud backup.

[bigstrat2003]

I can't speak for Jellyfin, as I currently use Plex. But it truly has been "set it and forget it" for me. I've never had an update break things, it just does its job and does it well.