Circlingthesun

Some of you might not be aware Karmic comes packed with a brand new version of PulseAudio that has some pretty neat new features built in. Amongst these is support for Apple AirTunes which is a protocol that allows you to stream audio to remote devices over a network. I’ve been using it to stream music wirelessly to my slightly louder desktop sound system while chilling on the couch with my netbook. You could potentially wire up your entire house and then DJ wirelessly from the loo. Below I will show how to do just that without having to touch the terminal.

Firstly you’ll need two computers with Ubuntu 9.10 installed. Both of these need to be connected to some kind of home or office network. In my case this is my desktop PC hooked up via Ethernet and my netbook which is on the same LAN via WiFi. Once you have this kind of setup the rest is pretty simple.

Next you need to install PulseAudio Device Chooser on both machines. The easiest way to do this is to open up Ubuntu Software Center which is under the applications menu. Start typing “pulseaudio device chooser” into the search box and it will pop up. Once installed, launch PulseAudio Device Chooser which is now under the Sound & Video section in the Applications menu. This wont bring up a new window but will add a new icon to the notification area at the top of your screen.

Now, on the machine with the nicest speakers attached to it do the following. Click on the icon in the notification area that looks like a headphone jack. This brings up a menu. Select “Configure Local Sound Server…”. In the new window that will pop up go to the “Network Server” tab and tick the boxes as shown below:

Do the same on the machine that you want to play audio from but instead of going to the “Network Server” tab, select the “Network Access” tab and tick the boxes like so:

All that remains now is to set the machine you want to stream audio from to use the remote computer’s speakers instead of it’s own. Again, bring up the device chooser menu by clicking on the headphone jack icon. At the top of the menu you will see a submenu titled “Default Server”. This is where you should now see your remote system listed right at the top and should look something like “joe@hostname”. Click it and you are done. All audio played will now be blaring through the other computers sound system.

Edit: Apparently AirTunes has nothing to do with what I’m explaining here.

I recently installed the beta version of the upcoming version of Ubuntu codenamed Karmic Kuala. The changes since 9.04 are somewhat subtle yet significant. Already in the beta you can feel the polish that went into it. Below, in no particular order, I shall rant about a few improvements that puts a smile on my face.

For one, the boot sequence has been completely revamped. Ubuntu now using a new X based splash screen that allows users to see way prettier graphics while they wait for their machine to come to life. The boot also seems more snappy so you wont have to look at progress bars for to long. Once the OS has loaded you are greeted with the new GDM login manager which has also been prettified. Overall the boot feels much smoother and should comfort the novice user when he or she boots into this strange new environment for the first time.

Sadly, the current default theme is yet another version of the same old brown crap we have seen countless times. Yet there is hope. As far as I know the final theme has not yet been chosen and if you install the community themes package there is this little beaut called Hanso. Hanso is another brown theme, but not the kind of shitty brown we have come to expect from Canonical. Think more along the lines of rich mahogany, something luxurious with an exclusive feel to it. Along with its shiny new icon set called Breathe, this theme is one that you wont have to be ashamed of when demoing a live cd to a new user. Frankly I think good first impressions are imperative. It doesn’t help explaining to a new user that the atrocity they had just witnessed is just the default theme and they can change any time. At that point the person has already made up his or her mind and will be running for the hills.

Enough about that. There is also a brand new Ubuntu Software Center which is reminiscent of the Apple App Store which I have never seen or used. Although it is really basic at this stage, it looks promising and like a step in the right direction. I’m actually typing this now on some oldy named blogging software called Lekhonee which I found in the Software Center.

Then, the network manager has also been revamped a bit. In conjunction with the Bluetooth applet you are now able to connect to your mobile phone’s 3G internet connection via Bluethooth in just a couple of clicks. Connecting to the internet from a fresh install is now as easy as grabbing some random persons phone and clicking about 7 or 8 times.

Another big reason to upgrade for those of you using Jaunty is that the big mess they made with the Intel Graphics drivers has now been cleaned up.

There are other changes like Empathy replacing Pidgin (which is probably a good move in the long term), but I don’t feel like going into that. You can go read about that on some other blog. If you feel the need to keep up to date with the latest developments and funky features on the Ubuntu front I highly recommend www.omgubuntu.co.uk.

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