en_GB http://tobyinkster.co.uk/tag/zeroconf/ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2007/11/28/itunes-sharing/ <p><img src="/blog/2007/11/28/itunes-sharing/files/iTunes-tiny.jpeg" alt="Screenshot of iTunes connected to Firefly" class="left" style="float:left"></p> <p><span class="caps">OK, </span>so a few weeks ago my old G3 iBook broke down. Yesterday I took delivery of a brand new (well, eBay-sourced, but new for me) G4 iBook and was about to start synching my music collection from my Linux desktop when it struck me that that&#8217;s just a dumb idea. I&#8217;ve got a 54 Mbps wireless network, so why not put it to good use. There must be a way to get iTunes to be able to play my <span class="caps">OGG </span>files directly off the Linux server.</p> <p>One option is <a href="http://www.gnome.org/projects/rhythmbox/">Rhythmbox</a> which I happened to already use as my main audio player on Linux. It is able to participate in iTune&#8217;s music sharing function by virtue of its <span class="caps">DAAP </span>plugin. However, this solution relied on me always being logged into the Linux box with Rhythmbox running. What if someone else was logged in?</p> <p>Then I discovered <a href="http://www.fireflymediaserver.org/">Firefly Media Server</a> a <span class="caps">DAAP </span>daemon capable of sharing a whole directory of music files (including several formats which iTunes doesn&#8217;t support&nbsp;&#8212; Firefly transcodes them into <span class="caps">WAV </span>on the fly!). This seemed like a great solution, so I installed it&#8230;<br style="clear:both"></p>