I would like to run a mediaserver for streaming stuff from a NAS which runs on NixOS.
Any recommendations on which one I should use? Considering its being of a good quality and present in NixOS packages.
I’ve found Plex and Subsonic so far.
However, for Plex I cannot find any options as to where it should pick the media content and so on. This puzzles a bit, maybe it’s just a player?
I don’t think Plex Media Server uses a very externally-edit-friendly configuration system, and thus the Plex module just enables the server. Normally after enabling the service, I access the localhost:32400/web interface, link the server to my plex.tv account, and then manually teach it about each of my libraries. In theory, a one time operation (I tend to backup/restore /var/lib/plex since it also contains metadata/art/watch data).
If you don’t care about freedom (in terms of source code license), want good mobile/web clients, chromecast support, things like “live watch parties”, etc, Plex is easy to recommend. It also remains the only media server that can do live-transcoded, adaptive-bitrate, seeking-enable streaming (due to a small ffmpeg patch someone should liberate, combined with DASH/hls players).
Well, I’d very much prefer to install something NixOS-way, I mean, that I can wipe the container clean and deploy a new one from the same config file, and it works. Having a significant data directory is not fun.
I’m not very much aware of the media server features yet, previously I’ve been streaming with the Server Message Block protocol and been pretty happy with it 
Seeking working great, and no problems with transcoding. But upgrading NixOS has changed something in Samba that VLC on iOS does not like it anymore (unlike all other OSes, not surprisingly). Maybe I could tune it up (possibly enabling SMBv1 or something), but I thought I’d try more mediaserverish protocols first. Are there any options without transcoding? I’m afraid server might not cope well with HD content and multiple users and no NVENC/CUDA or any GPU at all. And VLC as a mediaserver client should be OK with playing anything I got there.
Jellyfin (fork of emby) is FOSS and provides similar features like plex including live transcoding and mobile app etc.