As of recent I wanted a cheap alternative to run my Jellyfin media server.  After doing plenty of research, I decided to try setting up Jellyfin on a Raspberry Pi 5 despite many people advising against it.  

Since Proxmox does not natively install on ARM processors, I decided to install PiOS onto my Pi 5 which I will refer to as JellyPi for the remainder of this page. In order to create a Jellyfin server on PiOS, I needed to set up Portainer to run it as a container.

Luckily there were many forums online that had single install scripts for my very need. Next came the question of how Jellyfin will run. Seeing as the Pi 5 does not have any native GPU, transcoding was a big no for this machine. It turns out that when you are using the Client software to connect to your Jellyfin server rather than connecting over the web, then it doesn't make the host transcode! 

In order to host a Jellyfin server on a Raspberry Pi 5 you will need an external HDD, a decent network connection that doesn't drop often, and an uninterrupted power supply (i.e. an outlet you don't use). Once this is all said and done, Jellyfin should run perfectly fine and you will only be pulling around $10-15 USD worth of power ANUALLY. 

Note: If you are thinking about doing this yourself, consider setting up Tailscale for the Pi. The machine is strong enough to run various lightweight QOL services that sometimes require you to be on the same network.