Jellyfin From Scratch: How to Build a Complete Media Server on Linux Mint (Docker, Nginx, and Let’s Encrypt)

Start from a clean OS and end with your own secure, self-hosted streaming platform — complete with HTTPS access, remote streaming, and full media organization.

🧠 Introduction

Jellyfin is a free, open-source media server that lets you organize and stream your movies, shows, and music to any device. Think of it as your personal Netflix — except you control everything.

In this guide, you’ll start from a clean Linux Mint installation and finish with a fully working Jellyfin server running inside Docker, served securely through Nginx with Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates, protected by Fail2ban, and accessible anywhere through a DuckDNS domain.

This tutorial uses CPU-only transcoding (no GPU acceleration) and follows current Docker Compose v2 standards. This means, if want to use your GPU to do all the heave lifting, I ain't gunna show you that here but, you can still use this tutorial to get your server up and running then, configure your GPU later.

🧰 Prerequisites

A clean install of Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu 20.04 or later)
Sudo privileges
An active internet connection
A DuckDNS account and domain (e.g., myserver.duckdns.org)
Some media files stored locally or on a mounted drive

🧱 Step 1 — System Preparation

Start by updating your system and installing a few required packages.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

...give it a minute to do its thang.

sudo apt install -y ca-certificates curl gnupg lsb-release ufw fail2ban

.........This might take another quick minute. If you can any prompts, say "yes" or "y".

Enable the firewall and allow only essential services: (run each line separately)

sudo ufw default deny incoming 
sudo ufw default allow outgoing 
sudo ufw allow OpenSSH 
sudo ufw allow 80,443/tcp 
sudo ufw enable

Check status:

You should see SSH, HTTP, and HTTPS allowed. Did it work?

🐳 Step 2 — Install Docker and Docker Compose

Install Docker Engine and the Compose plugin using official repositories: These are to separate programs that work in tandem. "Docker" and "Docker Compose"

sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg echo \ 
"deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] \ 
https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \ 
$(lsb_release -cs) stable" | \ 
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

sudo apt update

sudo apt install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-compose-plugin

sudo systemctl enable docker

sudo systemctl start docker

Verify installation:

docker --version

docker compose version

They should both tell you what version of Docker & Docker Compose you have.