As always the Amahi Team is hard at work to bring you more Apps.  Is there is an App you would like to see on Amahi?  Just click on Suggest under Applications at Amahi.org

sabnzbd

NOTE: Amahi Application RPM Fusion (Non-Free) MUST be installed first.
It simplifies the process of downloading from Usenet dramatically, thanks to its friendly web-based user interface and advanced built-in post-processing options that automatically verify, repair, extract and clean up posts downloaded from Usenet. SABnzbd also has a fully customizable user interface, and offers a complete API for third-party applications to hook into.

osTicket

• Web and Email SuppportTickets can be created via email, online forms or phone (created by staff). Flexible configuration and mapping.
• Auto ResponseAutomatic reply that is sent out when a new ticket is opened or a message is received. Customizable mail templates.
• And much much more

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Web KeePass
KeePass is a free open source password manager to help you securely manage your passwords. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file.

Features and Key Benefits:

• Very strong compound data encryption
• Completely web based over totally secure HTTPS connection
• And much much more

Cheers!

The Amahi Team.

Pack up your bags we’re going to the show! FLOSS Weekly that is!

One of the core members (and founder) of Amahi, Carlos Puchol (aka cpg), is the guest of the 112th show, taping tomorrow March 10th, at 1:30 PM Pacific Standard Time (live brocast link). Post your question here in this post or ask in the forums!

FLOSS Weekly is a show on the TWiT network that premiered on April 7th, 2006.  The show contains interviews with prominent evangelists and developers in the Free, Libre, and Open Source Software movement and is hosted by radio personality Leo Laporte and Randal Schwartz.

Check out the distinguished group of interviewees that we join! Kent Beck (extreme programming),  Ward Cunningham (inventor of wikis), Miguel de Icaza (GNOME, Ximian, Mono), Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP), Tim O’Reilly (OSS visionary), Guido van Rossum (Python), Linus Torvalds (Linux), and Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia). Makes one kinda humble

Most episodes feature the primary developer or developers of a particular project. This episode is about Amahi!

The format of the show is an open discussion with a live irc in parallel, with the hosts asking about the guest and the project. Typically, the host will ask about the history of the project, how the concept was envisioned, its development model and so forth.

So come on out, pull up a chair, log-on and get your listening on!

Cheers!

The Amahi Team

We’re happy to share that Amahi just got chosen the Hottest Pick award by Linux Format magazine!

… there aren’t many easier ways of getting [a server] set up than installing [Amahi]

That’s what they had to say! Linux Format is UK’s largest  Linux magazine and one of the largest circulation Linux mags in the world, including bookstores and electronics stores. The March issue (LXF129) will be in the shelves in the next 2 or 3 weeks, so look for it!

In addition to this, next Wednesday March 10, at 1.30pm PST (10:30pm EST), there is a live interview about Amahi with founder Carlos Puchol on TWIT.TV’s FLOSS Weekly, one of the most popular free/open source video casts. We’re happy to be featured in this program which often brings illustrious guests. Video to be available a few hours after the live program ends. Suggest your questions to discuss!

Release time! Drum roll please …

Today we announce Amahi 5.2. The bits should be already installed in most Amahi systems by now. This is mostly a bugfix release, with a few major features taking shape, many of them contributed by a strong new team member Guillaume Boudreau (aka Mouton):

• Notably, we have started working on integrating a very exciting Drive Pooling technology called Greyhole: redundancy across drives, expandable storage on a JBOD-like architecture!
• Added an “extras” options in the shares to do a lot of advanced things, like adding quotas, running antivirus, add recycle bins to shares, add guest access, or auditing capabilities, in addition to supporting the development of Greyhole.
• Automatic support for automatic time zone setup of  PHP applications
• Automatically back up app databases when updating and of course other improvements for supporting apps
• TONS of application updates: eyeOS, FengOffice, Ampache, Gallery, etc. etc.
• The DLNA server has been updated to support M3U/PLS playlists
• AmahiTunes has been released as a new app with streaming built in right on the app
• Improvements to Dutch, Spanish, with new alpha support for Japanese
• … and many more fixes and improvements!

Simplicity is what we aim for! It’s your network and Amahi  makes it easy to keep it that way. No complex setup, no graduate degree, and no other software installation is needed. We’re thrilled that Amahi has been recognized in this way by a well known magazine!

Now, one of the things that we don’t do enough is to thank you, the community. You have been with us through thick and thin, always diligently reporting what works and what doesn’t, made contributions, improved documentation, and most of all you have continued to share and evangelize the amazing features of Amahi. So from the bottom of our hearts, thank you!

One of the most frequent issues that we hear about is the need to update an application to a newer version but the data from the old version may be essentially lost, unless you know how to back it up with things like phpMyBackup or phpMyAdmin (which can be error-prone).

No more! Steps have been taken to help protect your data for upgrade. Keeping with our data integrity mantra, we are proud to announce a new feature to Amahi!

We have deployed a new feature called “autobackup” for a selected group of applications.  These apps will automatically back up the existing database when select applications are uninstalled. When you install the new version, your data is imported, automatically!

These apps include some big ones like Drupal, Horde, FengOffice, eyeOS and Gallery. We are working to make this feature available to all apps that have data going forward. Tell us your favorite application you would like to see this feature for and we will do that first.

We hope you enjoy the updated versions for your HDA. It’s your network and Amahi helps you run it easily!

Thank you for your continued support!

The Amahi Team

Later using her own media server (DLNA) she would be better able to entertain not only the Tinman, The Cowardly Lion, and the Scare Crow but also the Great Wizard of Oz on her Big screen TV in full 1080P!

Now, we know that Dorothy never thought of any of that as she was traveling down the yellow brick road. But if the character of Dorothy had known about all that in 1900 when L. Frank Baum had written the story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz she would have! 

Read on for more on our latest one-click applications (and these are big ones)!!

WordPress

WordPress has a templating system, with widgets, as well as themes that can be easily installed. WordPress also features integrated link management; a search engine-friendly, clean permalink structure; the ability to assign nested, multiple categories to articles; multiple author capability; and support for tagging of posts and articles.

DLNA

This server is Open Source software developed by a NETGEAR employee for the ReadyNAS product line. So if you are looking for a NAS, please consider ReadyNAS first!

MindTerm

The MindTerm client also includes an integrated terminal emulator. It has the ability to run both as a standalone application and as an applet. It may be used free of charge for personal use as well as in some commercial situations where you have fewer than 25 users.

The Amahi Team.

We thought we’d review an interesting book called “Linux E-mail. Setup, maintain and secure a small office e-mail server,” which is apropos for this type of endeavor:

• Linux E-Mail. Setup, maintain and secure a small office e-mail server
• Ian Haycox, Alistair McDonald,  Magnus Bäck, et. al.
• ISBN:978-1-847198-64-8, second edition
• PAKT Publishing, 353 pages, softbound (direct link from PAKT)
• Overall: 8 out of 10

First, as someone who has handled his email server for many years, I can honestly say, email is hard. Or it has become harder and harder over the years. Bounces, authentication schemes, spam, blacklists, retries, timeouts, mutiple accounts per user, security, forwarding, etc., etc.

My advice is: DON’T DO IT!

That probably is not much of a deterrent for the more entrepreneurial of you. Admittedly, running a local and outgoing-only server is easier (and actually manageable, for a small volumes of email) than an incoming email server.

Let’s get on to the book review!

The book is for junior to mid-level system administrators and has 10 chapters, starting with the basics. Chapter 1 covers the basics of the mail-related protocols like SMTP, POP, IMAP, setup basics like DNS and backup servers. Chapter 2 is entirely dedicated to Postfix, configuration and settings. Postfix is my preferred mail transport agent (MTA). The chapter is fairly complete with inbox format, spam settings, use of blacklists, access  controls, with various tips on troubleshooting, which come in very helpful.

Next, on the other side of things, the book covers IMAP/POP access for clients, explaining the various tradeoffs nicely, as well as how to configure the desktop clients (Chapter 3). Chapter 4 covers web-based clients, focused mostly on the very popular SquirrelMail, covering installation and configuration. Of course, when we have it in Amahi as an app, it will be one-click install, and pre-configured, of course.

The focus of Chapter 5 is security. This chapter is fairly comprehensive covering SASL/TLS and rate limitation, and it’s really intended for advanced users. However, I was disappointed that it does not cover email signing, which is a must for even medium volumes of email (we know first hand by running the Amahi email services).

We’ll gloss over two chapters dedicated to procmail (which makes “filters” easy), a personal favorite. Suffice it to say that it’s pretty complete coverage. The next two chapters are on spam protection and antivirus. The part on spam protection with SpamAssassin is quite detailed, with three methods and client configuration, though personally, it “just works” for me, without too much configuration as I use a text based client (mutt). Completing the book is the last chapter, about backing up your system. This chapter includes information on more than just email backups. However, the emphasis is in backing up and restoring the email system.

Overall, a great book on running an email server, if you really want to do that (or just have to do it) 

We have:

• AmahiTunes (being fixed at this time) as an audio server for iTunes/Rhythmbox
• uShare, which is a UPnP server and delivers streamed content to the Xbox, the PS3 and other clients
• Squeezebox Server, to stream your music to a wide range of Logitech devices
• As well, of course, Amahi has one of the best share management systems for Samba, which you can use with the most excellent VLC, MediaPortal or XBMC front ends (as well as many other players).

In that front, we now proudly introduce the Amahi DLNA media server. It’s a port to Amahi of the excellent MiniDLNA server, released by an employee of Netgear.

This app is in Beta (active users enrolled in the tester program have access to test it), and so far we hear that it is working really well for even full 1080p content across a variety of clients like Xbox, PS3 and even thin hardware players like the WD TV Live or the Asus O!Play Air or even the Sony Bravia, Samsung TVs with DLNA clients in them!

This server has the advantage of periodically detecting new files (as opposed to uShare), and it supports more media formats, so it’s virtually maintenance-free!

We wanted to drop a quick “kudos” to all testers who are helping with it!

So, DLNA me Baby! We look forward to releasing it live for everyone in the community so that you can play your media again and again!

“What can we do to make our users lives simpler?”

We put ourselves in your shoes and envisioned these same thoughts.

“How am I ever going to get all of this data organized?”
“There has to be great software out there that I can bring in to help!”

We’ve got it! Give you more apps, better functionality, increased features, and a smoother experience all, on a reliable, proven Linux platform! We are all about enabling you the user to use your network the way you want to! We’re proud to bring you a student information system, a web based accounting system, content management system and a web-based torrent client all for your use on your network!

Read on for more!

Torrentflux b4rt

Torrentflux-b4rt is a web based transfer control client.

Torrentflux-b4rt allows you to control your internet downloads / transfers from anywhere using a highly configurable web based front end.

Feature List:

• Supports multiple internet transfer protocols, Unified transfer control
• Transfer statistics and logging
• Uploading and injection of metafiles (.torrent, .wget, .nzb files)
• and much more…

* Requires that the RPMFusion apps be installed BEFORE installing torrentflux-b4rt

openSIS

openSIS is the centerpiece of an evolving set of integrated open source administrative and curriculum tools.

webERP

It has a wide range of features suitable for many businesses particularly distributed businesses in wholesale and distribution.

An accounting system, more than any other system, needs to be reliable. The webERP code has been extensively peer reviewed but more importantly extensively tested in the field. The result is rock solid stability and a program that does exactly as it is supposed to.
All development is reviewed and the project is led by UK qualified Chartered Accountants both with experience in senior management roles in business. The emphasis is on practical features that businesses really need.

Family Connections

Features:

• Share photos on the Photo Gallery
• Communicate with friends and family on the Message Board
• Keep track of reunions, birthdays and anniversaries on the Calendar
• Store addresses and phone numbers in the Address Book
• Create a blog with the Family News section
• Share your favorite side dishes, desserts and more on the Recipes section

These apps are just the newest tools in your arsenal of digital independence.

It’s your network! We work hard to keep it that way!

Cheers!

The Amahi Team

You bet your knickers it is! The 5.1 release brings new and exciting enhancements to the Amahi platform, improving on the 5.0 release (our most successful ever)!

Q: Didn’t you just release 5.0? – A: Yes!

Q: What is new in the Amahi 5.1 release?

A: Have you ever been in an airport and thought “Oh no!! I didn’t turn off the server!”  No worries! You now have the capability of shutting down (or rebooting) your HDA remotely from the dashboard! We also have fixes in user creation, DNS resolution across the VPN, a much improved diskmounter script, improvements to the installer for Amahi in the cloud (VPS – Virtual Private Servers) and more …

Amahi 5.1 also adds Portugese/Portugal support to the supported languages and improves Polish support. We also started the Japanese localization. This will make Amahi supported in 20 languages!

Check out the full list in the release notes or read below for the gory details. In the mean time, as many of you know, we have been discussing how to improve the media server features of Amahi. We continue integration testing on a DNLA server, which is proving to work quite well!

Enjoy the 5.1 release! If you have Amahi 5.0, you get 5.1 automatically. If you have Amahi 4 (Fedora 10) here is a quick guide on transitioning to Amahi 5.

The lowdown of those pesky critters fixed in the 5.1 release ..

A minor bug in the Fedora Project affected our 5.0 release as a result of Fedora 12. Namely you could only create a user with all lower case, there could not be one capital letter we filed bug 550732 though it is believed to be fixed on Fedora 13.

The DNS subsystem will support resolution over the VPN connection to your HDA (this means you can more reliably use your webapps while VPN’d into your HDA). This resolves bug 400 which has been a long standing issue. NO MORE! It’s your network and we’re making it easier for you to use it!

There is a a newly added diskmounter script (called hda-diskmount), bundled out of the box, so  it’s much easier to access than the older one in the wiki. Simultaneously, this substantially improves the way the diskmount script sets up mounts and suggests how to mount them permanently in your HDA!

It’s your network and we help you keep it that way! We have been working hard to bring you the most reliable and secure platform of a home server out there.

Cheers!

The Amahi Team

In keeping with the spirit of our New Year’s Resolution of bringing you, more and more of the very best applications for your one-click pleasure, we are happy to announce the release of a web based chess client, an RSS aggregator, and a bookmark application.

Do you have an Application that you would like to see soon on your HDA? If so check here first, but if the app isn’t on our list then suggest it here.

The Amahi team wishes you a Joyous and Happy New Year!

WebChess

• Graphical user interface, No client download or java – will operate through firewalls
• Persistent Games, Move history, Undo, Choice of board and piece themes
• Move validation, including check, pawn promotion, castling and en-passant

Tiny Tiny RSS

• Server-side application, user only needs a web browser
• Supports RSS, RDF, Atom feeds using Magpie library
• and much more….

Online Bookmarks

• One click bookmark add button to browsers toolbar
• Download and display favicons, Public Bookmarks and Folders, Multiuser
• Folder structure in arbitrary depth
• Import/Export from/to MS Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera and Netscape

NOW GET INSTALLING!!!

The Amahi Team is at it again. Rolling out 5.0 first, then it was four new apps, and now more! We know what you’re thinking… (we’re thinking it too) do those guys at Amahi ever sleep?

The short answer is occasionally! We’re busy working on Amahi 5.1 and bringing you all of these new applications for your enjoyment. We start with the very popular SqueezeCenter! Enjoy the Holidays and read on ….

Squeezebox Server

Logitech introduces Squeezebox Server 7 (formerly SqueezeCenter and SlimServer) is a powerful and free Open Source software. Not only will it power any Squeezebox™ or Transporter®, but also any software MP3 player on your network.

This robust Open Source software includes contributions from a worldwide community of developers who are driven by the desire to work on exciting projects. The efforts of Logitech’s Open Source community results in rapid development and a rich set of features, evolving in response to user feedback.

Squeezebox Server Software

• Web Interface—control the player and manage playlists from a web browser
• MP3 & WMA Internet radio
• Alarm clock
• and much more…

phpMan

Adminer

• Connect to a database server with username and password
• Select an existing database or create a new one
• and much much more

Clipperz

Features

• One-click login – Users can store the details of their online services into Clipperz and quickly create a “direct login” link for each of them: just one click to authenticate and access the online service without typing any username and password.
• Offline copy – Users can dump their encrypted data from Clipperz servers to a local hard disk or USB drive and create a read-only portable version of Clipperz to be used when no Internet connection is available. Clipperz offline copy can also be easily moved to a USB drive.
• Clipperz Compact – A stripped down edition designed for the Firefox sidebar. It makes “direct logins” even more addictive! And it works with Opera panels too.

phpYahtzee

The object of the game is to score the most points by rolling five dice to make certain combinations. The dice can be rolled up to three times in a turn to try to make one of the thirteen possible scoring combinations.

Enjoy the holidays!

The Amahi Team

* We here at Amahi like all sorts of eclectic things and Creedance Clearwater Revival and Tina Turner comes to mind for this latest release.  CCR, (and then later Tina Turner in her smash hit in 1971) belted the amazing lyrics of “And we’re rolling, rolling on the river …”

First we have one of the most robust Content Management Systems systems out there (Drupal), and a very promising Google Apps-like suite of office and collaboration groupware with incredible functionality (OpenGoo). Also in this release we have an Internet speed tester and a nice web-based calendar browser, preconfigured to run on your HDA, browsing the calendars in the built-in calendar server.

Drupal

• Community web portals
• Discussion sites
• … and much more.

Drupal is open-source software and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers.

OpenGoo

OpenGoo gives you all the tools to manage the work of all the divisions of your company. You can plan and manage all your projects, easily following the status of every task.

Features include:

• MS Office-like and Google-Apps like functionality wrapped into one package with project management software
• Nested projects/work spaces
• Create milestones and tasks with linked milestones
• and much much more

Speedtest.net Mini

Speedtest.net Mini performs two key measurements used to determine the overall quality and performance of your Internet connection.

• Download Speed – The speed at which data is sent from the Internet to your computer.
• Upload Speed – The speed at which data is sent from your computer to the Internet.

iCalendar

• View calendars by day, week, month, or year as a graphical output or a list
• View different calendars (including remote web calendars) individually or in combinations
• Display Google calendars
• and much more

The Holidays are nearly upon us and here is a little Amahi magic for you!

The anticipation has been building and you guessed it from the title: Amahi 5.0 is here!

Simultaneously, we are very happy to announce:

• A partnership with a leading cloud VPS provider, RimuHosting!
• A beta service tailored to Amahi users, the Amahi Custom DNS!

What’s new in Amahi 5.0

• Available natively in in 18 languages! Awesome community job!
• Amahi in the cloud! This release has support for VPS servers (Virtual Private Servers). Today we are announcing a partnership with a cloud computing provider!
• Major performance and memory improvements, providing a much faster web interface and a 30% smaller memory footprint
• Based on Fedora 12, with optimizations for Atom processors built-in, preliminary support in SAMBA for PDC (Primary Domain Controller) with Windows 7 clients and much more
• Completely revamped web-based installer
• Users are more easily and securely setup now, the with password-protected pages and admin users
  
• Brand new architecture, with future growth in mind, supporting more types of apps, and more importantly, bring us closer to supporting Ubuntu and other platforms. Over 100+ apps are working in this release out of the gates!
• … and a few more goodies … see below for a link to the release notes (with the list of all 18 languages supported), more details, and screenshots!

This is a massively excellent release, if we can say so! Not only Amahi provides the largest repository of web apps available (not to mention easiest to install!), we have a great community, 14,000+ strong!

This is the fastest we have adopted a fresh release of the base Linux platform. Fedora 12 was barely released 3 weeks ago, and it has proved to be a solid release! Thanks go to the community for the contributions and testing to make a solid Amahi 5.0 release possible in such a short turn-around time! Keep on reading …

Amahi in the Cloud!

Many of you have written us about the need to more easily deploy your own server in the cloud, to share your data centrally, for business use, or to host your own apps from it.

Today the Amahi community is happy to announce our partnership with two leading VPS providers to help you deploy Amahi in their cloud servers.

RimuHosting is a leading VPS provider with data centers in London, Dallas and Australia. RimuHosting has been a hosting provider for Amahi for a while, doing a brilliant job. They are known for their reliability and fantastic customer service. Use the Amahi link to order and be sure to ask that they set up a Fedora 12 Amahi server for you in the comments section of your order, giving them your install code. They will do the rest!

An alternative in testing/evaluation is Linode,  a VPS hosting company built upon one simple premise: provide the best possible tools and services to those that know what they need — better hosting. Since Linode is currently working on the Fedora 12 offering, ask our support team how to get an image of Amahi for Fedora 12 on a Linode!

Amahi Custom DNS

We are also very excited to introduce a service in pre-launch stage tailored to Amahi users: Custom DNS!

What is it: it’s a custom DNS service for your domain.

What does it do: Amahi Custom DNS makes your domain and any number of subdomains you want, point to your HDA

What is it useful for: It is useful for hosting your own applications, regardless of your IP address changing. You can also customize any number of other features in your DNS (e.g. to host your own email). We will be announcing more about this when the service launches.

How can you get it: at the moment, we offer this service in pre-launch mode to interested users at a promotional discount of $35/6months. Get it now!

Send us an email at support at amahi dot org with any questions and feedback of features you would like in Amahi Custom DNS.

Outstanding Community Effort!

Thanks to the contributions and testing done by the Amahi community we can release this in such a short turn-around, with so many features, and in so many languages! More details on the release in the release notes.

Special thanks go to rampage537 and bigfoot65 for testing the platform and the apps and not let anything get by them, making Amahi solid! Special thanks also go to the many users that contributed in a number of ways: pjcrux, marcelv, bk, bdfoster, JCLeftie, robbiet480, JanJacobs, moredruid, rgmtt, Mr_Orange (come back safely!), (we probably are forgetting a few!) … and last but definitely not least, special thanks to the many translators in the translation team, who did an excellent job!

So Get Crackin’ and Happy Holidays early from the Amahi Team!

A Note on Upgrading from Amahi 4

Because this release comes with so many improvements for future scalability, we do not support/recommend upgrading from Amahi 4.x (Fedora 10) to Amahi 5.0 (Fedora 12). We strongly recommend a fresh install after backing up your data.

Fedora does support updating directly from Fedora 10 to Fedora 12, however, this is not well tested by the community and our experience indicates this can have lots of technical issues. If you decide to test this update path, please report your results in the forums.

Screenshots!

[photo credit by electricnude @ flickr]

With the proliferation of digital media files, the media server is becoming more and more of a reality. For families that have small children, they are a boon due to the protection of the physical media. For others, they simply hold the promise of instant recovery and playing of a particular movie.

Currently we have uShare, Jinzora and Ampache in Amahi as one-click apps.

However, we went on a search to find a video media server that would meet the following criteria:

1. Efficiently serve to multiple computers or devices
2. Supports open formats like Matroska (mkv)
3. Cross-platform using Open Source players like MPlayer and VLC, enabling a consistent interface.
4. Open Source
5. Supported streaming protocols such as RTSP, to allow for seeking within the stream

The search ultimately ended in partial failure. While there are solutions that meet criteria 1, 3, 4 and 5, relatively few meet criteria 2, and of those that do, there are problems; more on that in a minute.

First we looked at FFServer, a the little known server that comes with the FFMpeg transcoding package. While it met criteria 1,2,3 and 4, it was not completely stable and used http for the streaming protocol.

VLC followed. RTSP? Check! Matroska? Check! Mplayer and VLC? Check! FOSS? Check! Stable? No! VLC supports streaming in a server fashion, and it does support Matroska, however, the files that it streams suffer from audio synchronization problems. The advice from the VLC irc forum? Use a web server. It is faster and more efficient. Unfortunately, a web server was more than I wanted. Plus it doesn’t support RTSP. VLC’s server counterpart, VLS, is no longer supported and only supports older technologies like MPEG, and AVI, so it wouldn’t work either.

Jinzora? Great, however it is too picky about how the media has to be installed. Ampache? Again, it is web based. Coherence? Nope. Coherence, uShare and the PS3 Streaming Server, Mediatomb and the newcomer MiniDLNA show great potential, and they use DLNA/UPnP. DLNA and UPnP are technologies that show great promise for media servers in the home, and support for the protocol comes from devices like the PS3, Xbox 360 and other hardware solutions. At this point in time, Totem comes the closest to supporting DLNA/UPnP with a plugin from Coherence, but that eliminates a cross platform solution as VLC doesn’t look like it support DLNA/UPnP until well after the 1.0 release, and MPlayer doesn’t support it at all.

And the winner is Darwin Streaming Server (DSS), from Apple. While it doesn’t support Matroska, it does meet all of the other criteria, and doesn’t suffer from audio synchronization problems. In addition, the media can simply be stored in a single directory or be organized into subdirectories. Its native format is MP4, easily available from Handbrake, and the only preparation that the files need is something called hinting. Hinting, and an accompanying preparation that simply add synchronization information, adds additional streams to the MP4 container that tell DSS how to stream and seek within the stream. The result is nearly flawless streaming from my Amahi HDA to  an XP client. MP4Box, part of GPAC, handles the hinting and synchronization details with a single command. Even with multiple streams going, my HDA machine idles at a throttled 800MHz.

Additionally, DSS offers a modular approach to development, so plugging in additional support for technologies like Matroska may be forthcoming.

DSS suffers from one problem that some might find annoying, the lack of text based subtitles. MP4Box can add the stream and hint it, but DSS doesn’t send that portion of the stream. If the subtitle is burned into the H.264 stream, then there is no problem, but for multilingual or hard-of-hearing households, this may be a deal-breaker. For all others, if you are already using MP4s the sky is the limit. If you are looking at Matroska, well, the conversion process from Matroska to MP4 isn’t difficult.

Right now, for Amahi users, there isn’t a one click solution for DSS but we hope to . This should be soon fixed. For now, installing isn’t difficult as the dependencies are few. Simply download the source code from Apple, apply the patches for the 64bit version, if needed, and compile. Detailed instructions are available from CodeProject.

While there are possibly countless other possible solutions, this is the one that I found that did the job with the least overhead, while conforming to most of the criteria. Enjoy!

[Photos courtesy of ishrona]

Thanks to our amazing community, we already have a few completed, besides English (US): Chinese (simplified), Dutch, French (Canadian), Indonesian,  Portuguese (Brasil) and Spanish (Traditional).

Awesome work from the community!

We need help with some partial translations we have for German, Norwegian (NB – Bokmål), Italian, Greek and Russian.

Do you know any of those languages?

Do you know a language that you would like to see supported in Amahi?

The process is quick, about an hour or so to do an entire translation (less for a partial one), and it has some automatic help from Google Translate. If you are up for the task, get in touch by coming to the developer’s channel or write the team at support at amahi dot org!