chessie

I'll try the iGPU I have and prepare to be disappointed enough to go for Plan B. Then again, if it works well enough...

Well, I've a Ryzen 5 7600 [B650M], which does have an iGPU, but that's Radeon. This mobo/chipset fetched me three M.2 slots; handy for an unRAID cache drive pool plus SATA expansion. For transcoding, my understanding is that quality goes (best to worst): Intel -> nVidia (NVENC) -> Radeon. Now, mind you, I've not tested what the Radeon can really do... the Intel distracted me 😁.

Thanks for your reply... I'm off to find a reasonably priced Nvidia card, then, if possible- the crypto miners have made that much harder these days. The A380 Challenger is very tasty and available, and... vastly complicates things. I hear you on the 8125 NIC chip... I have plans to actually use the 2.5Gbps mode, as would especially benefit a single port server. If it's stable and performs, then yes, the default driver will stay; and thanks for the advice.

I've not yet purchased unRAID yet- because I'm weighting options. If everything can be done in Dockers, it's a big plus over the competition. I've new hardware that needs these plugins- DVB-Drivers (Hauppauge quad-HD card) OpenRGB Patch (ASRock Polychrome v2 [SMBus]) Nvidia-Driver RTL8125(B) PCI Drivers (ASRock 'Dragon' 2.5Gbps NIC) I might be using an Intel ARC instead of the Nvidia; but as that does absolutely require a VM, maybe not. Too bad about the current kernel, as the Intel is cheap, compact, and dynamite quality for transcoding. While I'd think that others would be buying newer hardware like this, I have not seen if you would expect that one plugin would conflict with the others. As I don't have unRAID up yet- can't test this. But I'd think this could be something a developer would know... and yes, I appreciate all the effort that goes into this. Can donate if all this works together; that would be amazing!

In the CA apps, can one install multiple 'driver' plugins? Because of the old 6.1.33 kernel, support for ARGB, Intel ARC, nVidia, Realtek NICs, and DVB tuners is missing in Dockers. Except for Intel ARC, all the above have plugins that modify the stock kernel and/or initrd to achieve hardware support. ARC (for Jellyfin transcoding) requires a VM. Ah, but can these plugins be installed side-by-side on the same server?