Will jellyfin 10.9.3 server work on Windows 8.1

[Efficient_Good_5784]

What I was asking is will I be forced to upgrade the app?

With Jellyfin's current management, things like a forced update will most likely not happen. And if in the future the people behind Jellyfin changes, or have a change of heart, and force updates on things, the code is currently available (open source). You and anoybody else will be able to fork the Jellyfin project and its clients, and keep them at a set version until the end of time. Or until the old versions no longer work on new hardware/software.

The only forced updates Jellyfin deals with are those out of the Jellyfin team's power to do anything about. Like if your device or OS forces auto-updates.

The reason you're being prompted to update the server is because future releases of the client (if not currently) will have features that only work with the newer server. So if you update the client then, you won't be able to use it until the server gets updated.

Also, this is one of the reasons Docker containers are great. As long as your system supports Docker, you can run any Jellyfin server version for as long as you want. All the server releases are hosted on the Docker repo, and starting with v10.9 onwards, the Github container repo too. If I wanted to, I could spin up a v10.7.0 server right now. All the code and dependencies for it are included with the image and kept separated from the rest of the host OS.

I'm so sick of upgrades... I started with Windows 95 and every time I would get everything the way I want, all the right programs, settings and really enjoying my PC, I need to install a new OS and start over..

Yeah it sucks, but that's just how thing go in this world. Big tech companies like Apple or Microsoft hire hundreds of thousands of people as employees. They most likely can't justify paying all those people to maintain a product to be the same forever. There's an incentive there for employees to keep building new things so that the companies can justify having so many employees. Even if it comes at the detrement of older software being phased out.

Though it's not all bad. You can't just keep maintaining the same thing forever. You eventually have to change or grow, or you'll become obsolete. Not because your product turned to trash, but because some new product came out with new features that better served new demands of the users.