Recommended OS for Jellyfin client

[Delath]

Hello, i have an old 4k monitor placed in my living room and i've been running LibreELEC (Kodi) with the Jellyfin plugin, but it has been a bit of a pain to setup and it seems a bad user experience to me, as i want to just use Jellyfin (client), what OS would you recommend for my Raspberry pi 4?
Bonus points if it is meant to be a TV os.
Many more bonus points if it is free and open source.

[TheDreadPirate]

LibreELEC is the go-to for this. Not sure of a better alternative other than an Android TV device.

[Delath]

LibreELEC is the go-to for this.  Not sure of a better alternative other than an Android TV device.

Well, i don't like Kodi interface and i would like to use the Raspberry 4...
Worst case i might just put a random OS and make it start at startup fullscreen the Jellyfin Media Player, but i'd still appreciate input from someone that tried to solve my issue

[Host-in-the-Shell]

There's really no good alternative unless you don't particularly care about HDR passthrough, as HDR isn't much of a thing under Linux yet. You'd have to run KDE which has a subpar implementation or use gamescope which is geared towards gaming more than anything.

Not to mention that with Libelec/Kodi you're already compromising by not having HDR to SDR conversion (through something like tonemapping for instance) in the first place. Also, no Dolby Vision support, since it only works for Kodi under Android and with a device that is licensed for it; otherwise it can't decode it.

[Delath]

There's really no good alternative unless you don't particularly care about HDR passthrough, as HDR isn't much of a thing under Linux yet. You'd have to run KDE which has a subpar implementation or use gamescope which is geared towards gaming more than anything.

Not to mention that with Libelec/Kodi you're already compromising by not having HDR to SDR conversion (through something like tonemapping for instance) in the first place. Also, no Dolby Vision support, since it only works for Kodi under Android and with a device that is licensed for it; otherwise it can't decode it.

I'll begin by saying that i'm not knowledgeable enough about tonemapping and HDR in general.
Still, i hardly use that 4k monitor in my living room and i just wanted to set it up to work for guests those rare times where i need it, so even if i lose quality, at least it needs to work and have a decent UX.

[Host-in-the-Shell]

Well, provided that you tried different Kodi interfaces and liked none of them (and I can't blame you, I moved away from it for the same reason), and HDR passthrough doesn't matter, then I'd try something like a minimal Debian install, setup autologin without a user password, autostart some minimal display session like sway and configure it to start Jellyfin Media Player fullscreen, which you can then pair with a controller.

I don't have a pi or any arm device, so I'm not sure if sway (or any other software) works under it, but I suppose it should.

[Delath]

Well, provided that you tried different Kodi interfaces and liked none of them (and I can't blame you, I moved away from it for the same reason), and HDR passthrough doesn't matter, then I'd try something like a minimal Debian install, setup autologin without a user password, autostart some minimal display session like sway and configure it to start Jellyfin Media Player fullscreen, which you can then pair with a controller.

I don't have a pi or any arm device, so I'm not sure if sway (or any other software) works under it, but I suppose it should.

Hi, it has been some time but i only recently got back on setting up the raspberry pi 4 as a TV jellyfin client for my living room.

I just wanted to add that sadly Jellyfin Media Player doesn't support ARM devices