I was contemplating switching from Cinema4d to Blender for a long time, but the UX of C4d was so nice and Blender’s frankly sucked. Then 2.8 came out with a UI overhaul that changed all that and now I’d never dream of switching to another 3d package when Blender is so easy to use, extensible with Python, and has a huge community around it. Blender’s popularity soared after the UX changes. Sometimes, a UI overhaul can make all the difference.

Even where Blender falls short, there’s usually an addon that fills the gap, often paid, but still open source, which is 1000x better than competing options that almost always involve a subscription.

The benefit of a community of open source software around it also can’t be overstated. For instance, MakeHuman kicks ass, Auto-Rig Pro makes it usable for mocap and character animation, etc. Blender Studio’s projects like Flamenco render farm and automated Blender Studio pipeline built around the also open source Kitsu that I self-host are also amazing. Collectively, it all blows Autodesk out of the water and should be a shining example to all other open source projects.

I stand corrected about PostgreSQL support dropping in 10.11. Seems we may still have quite a wait ahead of us.

I was imagining setting up an old laptop as a backup to my main server with PostgreSQL replication for the Jellyfin DB and some sort of file synchronization for media and metadata. I have yet to manually setup PostgreSQL replication outside of a cloud provider where the process is automated, so I was planning it as an interesting learning experience. However, from the post above, it seems I was misinformed about the timeframe of PostgreSQL support in Jellyfin.

Ah, seems I had a misunderstanding and appreciate the info!

Really looking forward to 10.11 when the EFCore functionality is in place so I can run it with PostgreSQL and actually backup the DB properly and also have proper replication for a hot standby.

As many others have said, not allowing inbound WAN connections into my LAN is an important step. I also run k3s on my server with Calico as the CNI and make heavy use of network policies to keep anything I’m running from misbehaving. That, along with easy ingress makes k3s worth it for me over Docker Compose. I use OpenWRT on my router and force certain devices to run through a VPN and block other devices from the internet entirely.

I think paid open source like GPL Blender addons from BlenderMarket, Gumroad, etc. is a good option. You pay for it to support the devs while also owning what you bought.