Plex launches version for Linux, and has chosen the snap package to reach more people

Plex for Linux

It's been a long time since plex is available for Debian/Ubuntu based systems, but this desktop client was not as good as it could be. In fact, it was more reminiscent of a web application than anything else, or that was my personal impression. Now things have changed for two reasons: it can be installed on more Linux distributions, and they have released a new version that is much better than what they offered until now.

It is a bit surprising that in the official download page for Linux There is only one option, the snap pack. Actually, there are two, but because there are two types of Plex: on the one hand there is the desktop client, and on the other the HTPC. The first is at version 1.45.0, and the second has been upgraded to version 1.17.0. The DEB package that could be found some time ago is no longer available, and Flathub is not mentioned anywhere.

Plex better in snap than in flatpak?

I use KDE and have ended up giving in to some snap apps over flatpak. True, the first time we open them they take longer to open, but then they seem better integrated into the operating system than the ones we found in Flathub. For example, Cider, an application to listen to Apple Music on Windows and Linux, by hovering over it in the lower panel of KDE it shows us a thumbnail of the album that is playing and the possibility of advancing or delaying a song, in addition to being able to download the volume from the same icon. This, which is also seen in the AppImage version, is not seen in the flatpak version, so I almost agree with Mark Shuttleworth when he claims that snap apps are better integrated than flatpak ones. I mention this because Plex is a multimedia application, and controls can appear on the icon depending on graphical environment.

But the above is just a personal opinion or impression, and many developers still prefer flatpak apps at snaps This is not the case with many major app developers, such as Plex choosing Canonical's packages to make it available for any Linux-based distribution. Because you have to remember that new generation packages are available in any distro, and snaps can be installed as long as you have snapd installed and the architecture (amd64 in general) is compatible.

In any case, the news is that Plex has a new version, which is much better than the previous one and can now be installed on Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux...


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  1.   care said

    You have to be very careful with Plex. Keep in mind that what you have on Plex is hosted on their servers and they know what it is and if you have, for example, movies downloaded from the Internet, they can report you, there have been cases, I'm not making it up. Plex has free and paid services, but hardly anyone pays, because the free version is more than enough, so they are very angry that you use their servers to host movies downloaded from the Internet and then watch them through Plex with the Chrome cast. That's why I use Emby Server, which works great and is hosted locally and you don't have any risk of being sued and is also available for many Linux distributions. I used Plex and I saw a news about the complaint and I started looking for alternatives and I found Emby Server and it is infinitely better than Plex.