Help me and my roommate stream music to each other

October 12, 2006 6:57 AM

How can I stream music from a Linux PC to a Mac computer?

I have a computer running Linux with no speakers hooked up. My roommate's computer running Mac OSX has speakers. We're both inside the same network. Is there any way we can stream music from my computer to his and play it on his computer? I know in principle this should be possible, but I'm not sure how to go about it. Thanks!

posted by markcholden to computers & internet (12 comments total)

Set up a daapd server on the linux machine - details here or here.

This will appear as in iTunes as a regular share, giving you access to all the music on the Linux box.
posted by azlondon at 7:05 AM on October 12, 2006

Slimserver.

Run it on your linux PC, and stream it to the Mac by pointing your mac's media player to http://ip.address.of.linuxpc:9000/stream.mp3. If you want to get even fancier on the mac there's a java app called "softsqueeze" that directly emulates the squeezebox hardware that Slimserver supports natively.

From the Mac you can control what gets streamed over slimserver by pointing a web browser to http://ip.address.of.linuxpc:9000 . There a number of "skins" to the web UI as well. I'd recommend the heavily AJAXed "Touch" http://ip.address.of.linuxpc:9000/Touch/. But then again of course I'd recommend Touch...I wrote it :)
posted by mcstayinskool at 7:07 AM on October 12, 2006

Using a recent version of Rhythmbox, go to the "Sharing" preferences and check the "Share my music" box. This will show up as an iTunes share. (The linux.com article linked by azlondon above mentions other GUI players with DAAP sharing built in.)
posted by mbrubeck at 7:20 AM on October 12, 2006 [1 favorite]

Icecast
posted by PenDevil at 7:37 AM on October 12, 2006

I have a feeling actual streaming is overkill. Either use one of these iTunes fakeouts or simply share the files over the network. I've played mp3's at my office that were being shared from my home computer, accessed via a samba share and dynamic DNS.
posted by mzurer at 7:42 AM on October 12, 2006

2nding slimserver and/or mt-daapd. using both at home.
posted by joeblough at 8:03 AM on October 12, 2006

3rding Slimserver. I use it in exactly that setup at home (Linux server to mac) and it works like a charm.
posted by The Bellman at 8:44 AM on October 12, 2006

3rding mt-daapd to play nicely with itunes sharing.
posted by dmd at 10:47 AM on October 12, 2006

Isn't that what VLC is for?

"It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network."

They have versions for every OS under the sun.
posted by dgeiser13 at 10:54 AM on October 12, 2006

Rather than streaming, you could just set up a samba share for the music on the pc, mount that on the mac, and tell itunes to add the tracks.
posted by pompomtom at 2:48 PM on October 12, 2006

Ampache
posted by autojack at 3:26 PM on October 12, 2006

Just set up a SAMBA share on your linux box and add the files to his iTunes library from the shared drive.
posted by SubFuze at 11:30 PM on October 12, 2006