In the next article we will take a look at a media server called Plex. This server will give us the opportunity to organize videos, music and photos from our personal libraries. What's more we can stream from these to smart TVs, media players and mobile devices.
This app is a media player and software suite. This will be made up of different applications to play media associated with a media server. It is available for Mac OS X, Gnu / Linux, and Windows.
Plex also offers streaming apps for Roku and Chromecast. Plex's built-in channels give the user access to different online content providers, such as YouTube, Vimeo and TEDTalks among others. Plex too provides access to cloud storage services including Dropbox, Box, Google Drive and Bitcasa among others.
This server will organize all of our personal media so that they can be easily accessed and enjoyed through a web user interface via network. It will also give us the possibility to install Plex apps on our mobile devices, consoles or smart televisions and thus be able to access the available media from our server. In addition, online services from Plex give users access to a growing list of plugins to be able to enjoy online content including Hulu, Netflix, and CNN among others.
This content server will also allow us to keep children away from inappropriate content. We can do this thanks to parental control. Also, if you live with multiple people under the same roof, you can create a managed account for each of them. You will no longer have to miss the right moment in which you stayed from the last episode of your favorite series, if someone decides to continue watching it without you.
It should be clarified that this service has a free version, which provides us with a large number of features. We can also make use of a Premium version that will still offer us more possibilities.
Install Plex Media Server via Snap Package on Ubuntu
Plex media server is easy to install on Ubuntu and its derivatives through the snap app. Anyone can install it from Ubuntu Software or via snap command.
For Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 16.04, you can first install the snapd daemon. We can do this via command by opening a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and writing something like the following in it:
sudo apt-get install snapd
Now what you have to do is install the Plex media server Snap application. We can do this through Ubuntu Software or using the following command in the same terminal as before:
sudo snap install menta-plexmediaserver --classic
As always, we will be asked for our root password when installing software on our computer.
The service starts automatically after installation with the root user. The "–classic" flag used in the install command allows the server to access media files outside the home directory of the snap package.
Index media files to Plex
For the server to be able to serve, you have to tell it which files are going to be available. Therefore, after installation, open a web browser and enter the following address as the URL:
http://localhost:32401
Sign up for the service that is going to be shown to you and starts the indexing and classification of your multimedia files. This will allow you to access them from any device.
In order to access the contents of your brand new content server, you can make use of a multitude of applications for different platforms that Plex provides to the user. You can take a look at these apps from the website from the Plex server.
If you need help installing or configuring the Plex server, you can take a look at the documentation provided to us on the website.
Uninstall Plex Media Server
If you don't quite like this media server, you can remove the snap application from the Plex media server. To do this, open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and execute the following command:
sudo snap remove menta-plexmediaserver