I use LMS and it is fantastic. However not knowing your setup in detail, I cannot help you more.

1. LMS can stream to multiple devices, separately. (Different music in different rooms/devices).
2. LMS can stream simultaneously to multiple devices. (Same music across several devices).
3. Yes, it can chromecast (chromecast bridge extension). There is also an Airbridge extension.
4. Yes, there is a plugin to stream from YouTube (I don’t use it, so I don’t know if this includes or excludes YT music)

I looked through my extensions and I cannot see a ‘spotcast bridge’ option, but doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You’d have to look about, maybe github.

Finally, like you have ‘snapclient’ on the RPi’s you can/could change them to ‘chrome clients’ (different project but same deal as the snapclient). When checking, it seems the solutions that exist are pretty out of date, and there are comments that google has locked down on the ‘chromecast api’ that check the client is legit or not, through signed certificates. So everything is fine if you have legit chromecasts, but it might not be so successful with an emulated cc, such as VLC client or omxplayer.

More finally though, Logitech Media Server, is designed to be that - the central server of your music. Ideally you would have all your music locally, rather than on other services. So it probably isn’t what you are looking for.

Good FOSS software and reliable service providers? Etc.

Wow much detail. You’re gonna get so much help.

Selfhost Bitwarden. Has apps for everything, browser extensions and can be accessed via webpage as well.

It was only a few weeks ago (maybe 4). Systems are all kept up to date with ansible. Most are Debian but there are few Ubuntu. The two that failed were both Debian.

Granted both that failed have high [virtual] disk usage compared to the other VM’s. I cannot remember the failure now, but lots of searching confirmed that it was likely unrecoverable (they could boot, but only into read only). None of the btrfs-check “dangerous” commands could recover it, spitting out tons of errors about mismatching somethings (again, forgotten the error).

My setup is different to yours but not totally different. I run ESXi 8, and I started to use BTRFS on some of my VM’s.

I had a power failure, that was longer than the UPS could handle. Most of the system shutdown safely, a few VM’s did not. All of the EXT4 VM’s were easily recovered (including another one that was XFS). TWO of the BTRFS systems crashed into a non recoverable state.

Nothing I could do to fix them, they were just toast. I had no choice but to recover using backups. This made me highly aware that BTRFS is still not a reliable FS.

I am migrating everything from BTRFS to something more stable and reliable like EXT4. It’s simply not worth the headache.

Fuck firefox. Are you sheep just going to ignore all the shit they put you through, and didn’t even explain themselves?

Firefox is a shitshow, I don’t care “how good they are now”. If you don’t remember how bad they treated you circa 2012, then fuck off groupie wanker.

Firefox is where they are for a good reason, they cannot be trusted. Only wankers keep promoting them.

31 branches? uh… okay.

For now, yes. You actually believe that will continue to be that way in 12 - 18 months?

It’s in their docs. https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/installation/index.html

Follow the pages one by one, (ie install php modules etc, edit settings, install apache2, edit settings, etc etc). Follow the recommendations (eg. PHP8.2, don’t try to use bleeding edge).

You’ll be running in no time, and have a properly updatable system using apt, and the nextcloud ./occ command.

I would recommend using Debian 12 over Ubuntu variants. There are other guides, like this: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorial-collections/how-to-install-and-configure-nextcloud But you may have to “convert” some of the Ubuntu specific stuff to Debian, but actually there is probably no difference (php module naming convention maybe? Is that still a problem today?)

Tbh, get a Brother printer for any OS. At least they don’t buy into the shitfuckery that HP and others do with ink and firmware updates.

“obscure Emby”… You don’t get out much, do you.

Emby is a direct competitor to Plex, and its better. It doesn’t require and internet connection to work, doesnt force signup, its completely self hosted if you want. The dev is responsive, bugs are fixed quickly.

It does have subscription options if you want, none are required for full functionality.

Emby is not FOSS, but neither is Plex.

I use the chat that is available in Thunderbird, my email client. It can connect to various types of chat (I dont remember them all) like Matrix.

ClamAV and ClamWin (frontend for windows) are FOSS software, however do note that Clam does not offer real-time protection. For Linux it does offer On-Access scanning, this additionally needs to be setup. I am unaware if the current Windows version(s) has changed this.