Distro hopping: installing Plex Media Server and Home Theater on PC-BSD

Back when I was using elementary OS I made a post on how to install Plex Home Theater on Linux. While Plex officially supports Linux in most cases it did not for Home Theater but that thankfully didn’t stop me from getting it working. When it comes to PC-BSD things get a little more complicated. The only BSD download that Plex officially supports is Plex Media Server and even then only for FreeBSD. As I’m not overly familiar with BSD yet I’m not sure if I can just use that download on PC-BSD or not.

A search through the AppCafe

Thankfully PC-BSD comes with this nice application called AppCafe that is basically a big repository of software (like an app store). Searching for Plex in there finds Plex Media Server:

AppCafe
AppCafe

However if I check the box that says “Search all available PBIs and packages” then not only do I get a newer version of Plex Media Server but also Plex Home Theater as well.

Even more options!
Even more options!

The newer version of Plex Media Server was called ‘Plex Media Server – Plex Pass’ and as I don’t have a Plex Pass I chose to just install the slightly older version instead. Maybe this is the beta channel download or something? Anyway the install went well and Plex Media Server was good to go. One odd thing I did notice was that the local Plex management website wouldn’t fully load in Konqueror for some reason, only in Firefox…

Plex would only load in Firefox for some reason...
Plex would only load in Firefox for some reason…

Installing Plex Home Theater was a similar experience. I simply grabbed it from the AppCafe and away it went.

Because who doesn't love Big Buck Bunny?
Because who doesn’t love Big Buck Bunny?

So all told it really wasn’t that different of an experience installing Plex Media Server and Home Theater in PC-BSD compared to elementary OS. This mirrors what I’ve seen elsewhere in PC-BSD during my time with it as well. Basically as a long time Linux user I must say that so far BSD really isn’t that much different in day-to-day operations.

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2 Trackbacks / Pingbacks

  1. Distro hopping: slimming down with LXLE | The Linux Experiment
  2. Plex Live TV Available in Beta on iOS devices, Android TV and Nvidia Shield | PUPUWEB

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