i’ve been half-expecting them to roll-out drm for everything including cat videos and shit for awhile now.

it’s an iptv stb, it doesn’t need much. it’s not designed for subscriber customization or ‘app’ loading.

none. sounds like you’re cursed to ride the windows train for life.

i’ve been using firefox and its predecessors since the very beginning, all the way back to pre-release navigator.

i do have (and have always had) other browsers installed (using ‘portable’ installations of them, mostly, these days). currently those include vivaldi, opera, librewolf and waterfox. at least one of which is added along side firefox on each desktop (most often also with a firefox dev edition). these are mostly for testing but also to separate specific online tasks into their own browser. the chromium-based ones are used for very specific things requiring addons that don’t work well or at all with firefox.

unless i need to in order to assist a client, i do not use chrome as provided by google, and i do not use edge from microsoft except for its primary function: downloading another browser when i don’t have a flash drive handy with its installer already downloaded and saved to it.

having actually read the policy documents in question and considering the intent and purpose of the changes that mozilla is making, i have no plans on changing my primary browser.

even the old ‘xp mode’ for win7 was just a vm.

windows isn’t the problem. it can and will run all day, every day.

your existing box isn’t a server. it’s a desktop pc that you’re doing ‘server things’ on. you want a server, make it one:

move the retro gaming, the ‘shitposting’, the 3d design work, and the random internet use that goes with those things, off to a different pc. doesn’t even need to be that much of a pc. enough for the 3d work and emulators, and a fast lan port or wifi for accessing your ‘server’.

leave the existing one with the *rrs, the storage, the drivepool and snapraid… get everything else off. disable any oc settings you have enabled. it’s a server. then leave it alone.

it all runs on Windows 10 (which is where the issue arises)

what ‘issue’? your hardware should ‘officially’ support win11.

the only 6bay lff cage for it i found online after a quick search was over $400usd.

as others mentioned, msa30 is scsi (yuk). along those lines, you’d want the msa60 which is sas/sata, plus somewhere on the server to connect it to. probably not cheap.

but i really don’t think it’s worth putting a whole lot of time or money into a 15 year box… at least not anything that can’t be used in or with newer stuff later.

i’d probably just grab some 2-5tb 2.5in hdd for media storage and use those before i bought something specific for that old hardware.

dl380-g7 is some really old stuff. 1st gen westmere. not very power efficient for the performance. there’s no hardware encoding (qsv with encoding started with some 2nd gen).

how well it can do software encoding would depend on the cpu. but don’t expect too much, and nothing more demanding than h264 avc at reasonable settings. you’d need a newer video card with hardware encoding for hevc, av1 or anything like that.

iirc there was a 6bay 3.5in option for those, and that cage/backplane might be available somewhere.

i was impressed with cosmic when i gave it a spin here… it has a lot of potential… just still very ‘incomplete’ currently.

it’s built in. should not be necessary to do this.

bluestacks would probably be the emulator to use.
https://www.bluestacks.com/apps/entertainment/cricfy-tv-on-pc.html

i just use repurposed PCs. cost (or lack of, rather) is the prime factor.

the main playback ‘device’ is currently a 6th gen laptop that runs lid down (doesn’t support turbo boost, so heat isn’t an issue at all), and an old wireless kb/trackpad for a ‘remote’.

storage is a hodgepodge of usb hdd, 2.5in hdd, and desktop systems. usually only one of which is being used (powered on) at a time.

i just use a text dump out of ‘everything’ for my ‘catalog’ and have numerous vlc playlists saved. i looked into things like jellyfin but the work involved in normalizing directory structures and filenames would be nightmarish.

used to be one in rhel… system-config-date or something like that.

for linux and the most basic of basic tasks, i’d look at peppermint. it’s what i put on all the old crap here with ‘marginal’ specs that choke on windows. debian stable xfce based. base install is pretty sparse, not even a browser is included initially. a utility pops up after first boot to facilitate installing a browser, media player, and a few other things if you want them, or the entire debian stable repository is also available. one thing of note. with only 2gb ram, it’s gonna be tight, whatever he runs on it.

his use case is screaming for a cheap chromebook, though. so at least consider that instead. an old laptop like that might make someone a nice little pihole or something, if it’s not ready to be put down for good.

the first unlimited streaming-only was $7.99 in jan 2011. it had no ads and was literally ‘unlimited’.

“should be” $11.45 today (dec 2024, acc to bis.gov).

but wait, they now charge extra for streaming outside the ‘household’, so better knock that down by at least one-third.

hey look, we’re right back at $7.99.

i don’t use email much at all, only signups at a few places.

at work, communications with my coworker or clients is by phone or in person, not email or very rarely sms. email is mainly the required communications with the state (business registrations, taxes and shit) and invoices and receipts for things we use or buy online. plus lots of spam. lots and lots of spam. oh, and scams. lots of scammers and phishers too.

if the goal is simply to ‘de-google’, then mxroute itself is enough. 3rd party. decent policies. good track record. reasonable price (especially their promos).

self-host a downloader/extractor site for your own use, behind authentication (so it’s for you only, not randoms off the internet that ‘find’ it).

interactive mode is nice and basically combines those steps, and i tend to use it for one-off downloads of a single url. that way i get to see what i’m gonna get (filesize, resolution, codec, etc), before i get it.

yt-dlp -f - https://youtu.be/xWUCsE4IM_c

then at the prompt here in your example, i’d input 140 for audio only.