So i have several machines here on one local network.

I'd like to centralize all my music on ONE machine and give the workstations the abillity to read directly from it. (So i don't have to download music tracks on each workstation, that'd be a waste of time and space).

workstations use anything from Windows 2000 and different flavours of GNU/Linux.


I *could* use samba but perhaps you can throw a few other ideas my way. I remember reading up on mounting a FTP as a drive... but I need something that will work with both Windows and GNU/Linux.

I know nothing about setting this up, but I've seen it done...

"Stream" the music from the server via http. Obviously, all you need is the browser and any necessary plug-ins to handle the stream.

Obviously you'd need Apache installed and running. I have no idea what type/level of scripting would be needed. I have to admit though, it would be pretty cool.

Want to browse the collection manually tho, don't want a 'static' playlist.

If it were all one platform in use, I'd look into nfs/samba but im curious to see what else is out there that i haven't already found.

Icecast, shoutcast, something along those lines might work. Also check out these links:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/gini-stream/

http://freshmeat.net/projects/gstreamer/

Here's icecast:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/icecast/

http://freshmeat.net/projects/inoize/

Here's more:
http://freshmeat.net/search?q=media+stream



Cool

I would imagine you could have a dynamically created playlist from a website through some sort of scripting. I'd also imagine it could be done on a per-connection basis. As I said before though, I haven't done it myself, and have no idea how complex a task like that could be. Besides, I don't know what kind of horsepower would be needed for 5, 10, 15 users all trying to stream from one machine/harddrive concurrently. *shudder*

I have to admit, the brief description of Icecast looks pretty interesting. If/when I set up my web server, I'll have to look into it some more.