Libresonic is a web based music streamer with transcoding capabilities. In contrast to Sonarr, Radarr and Headphones it does not download new content but rather manage and provide convenient access to existing collections. Unlike Subsonic or Madsonic it is free and has no limitations.
Radarr is a movie download manager capable of downloading from BitTorrent and Usenet. It is a fork of Sonarr and is comparable to Couchpotato or Headphones. It integrates with rTorrent, uTorrent Server, Deluge, NZBGet and many more downloaders. It can also make use of Jackett to communicate with BitTorrent trackers.
ruTorrent is a web interface for a rTorrent. The overall look and feel is comparable to uTorrent Server. It requires Apache Web Server, PHP and of course rTorrent to be installed.
rTorrent is a fast and efficient command-line based BitTorrent client. It can work many front-end interfaces such as ruTorrent. When used with a web interface it is similar to other clients like uTorrent Server or Deluge.
Pydio is a file-sharing and synchronisation application that can be freely installed on multiple platforms. It requires a web server such as Apache, PHP and MySQL / MariaDB to be installed. It is similar to cloud file storage software like ownCloud but has more features in some departments and is geared more towards local network file storage.
Mergerfs is a FUSE based union filesystem that allows pooling of mount points or other directories into a single virtual directory. While it does consume significant CPU resources and somewhat limit maximum throughput it works well otherwise and is easy to set up. It still offer sufficient performance for a home server use. It is very similar to other union file systems such as MHDDFS.
GPU passthrough allows native graphics performance in the virtual machine which opens up new possibilities. One major use case is virtualized gaming as well as hardware acceleration for certain applications like Adobe Creative Suite. Steam In-Home Streaming opens up some odd but functional configurations by leveraging the VM to stream to clients on a local network. A major advantage of running Steam in a VM is that it does not prevent the use of the host system while streaming. In practice this could mean that two different users could simultaneously make use of the same system.
MusicBrainz database is used by many applications such as Headphones or MusizBrainz Picard. The one major issue with the database is that the official service is slow and often unavailable while mirrors are either paid or unreliable long term. The server can be installed from scratch locally but is quite tedious which is why it is easier to run the server as a virtual machine. It is not as efficient as the entire OS will have to run in the background but it much easier to setup. Virtual Box can be used to run the VM without any changes but there is no need to run multiple Virtual Machine Managers so in this case QEMU is used.
VFIO kernel is used to easily apply kernel patches to workaround certain hardware limitations relating to virtualization and hardware passthrough suc as when setting up GPU Passthrough with QEMU. Among others VFIO kernel applies i915 VGA arbiter and ACS override patches. The patches al need to be enabled by adding parameters to the boot loader. The custom kernel comes in stable or LTS varieties.
Jackett is a proxy server that provides a translation service between applications like CouchPotato, Sonarr or Headphones and tracker sites. It supports many private trackers. Instead of configuring the tracker directly in the app, it is now configured in the web interface and added to the app as a generic indexer.
Passwordless SSH logins offer vast security improvements over standard password login. Additionally once setup passwordless logins offer a convenience of not having to enter a password when logging in from the same system.
Steam is a digital distribution platform primarily dealing with games. It manages games and as of recently other media like music. It has some unique features like In-Home Streaming that allow streaming games over the network. Arch Linux is not officially supported and there are some issues to work around. Prior to installing configure audio and install video drivers.
screenFetch is a Bash Screenshot Information Tool that prints ASCII art along with basic system information when executed. Many distributions are supported with unique ASCII art included. It is useful to run it on login automatically to immediately see system information.
OpenSSH allows powerful and convenient way to remotely access remote systems. However it creates a possible security weakness which is one reason it is not installed by default. With proper configuration it can be secured and allows the administration of headless servers servers or other devices.
Rsync is a widely used file level synchronisation utility. When upgrading or replacing a failing disk drive it is important to make sure no data or even metadata loss occurs. Rsync can provide near mirror copies of files and directories. Only block-level copying can create a perfect mirror but it is not needed or wanted in all but some cases such as when a hardware defect is present in which case block level duplication can reduce data-loss.
