Q:

Watch videos from a remote computer on the LAN on ubuntu

I want to watch the videos on a friends computer on the LAN without having to download it. Both of us are running ubuntu. Now one way is to ssh to his computer, cd to the directory where the video is and run the falling command:
cat video.avi | ssh me@mycomputer mplayer -

This works. However the problem is that I cannot seek inside the video as in can't go forward or backward in it. Is there a method by which I can watch the videos and also seek in them ? I can install any software on his comp and my comp to aid this process. I have root level access on both computers. Any suggestions ?

A:

Why don't you set up a Samba share? You'll be able to stream any kind of file on your LAN.
Ubuntu has a right-click option for this since Karmic :

Right click on the folder you wish to share and select "Sharing Options"
Check "Share this folder" (and also "Guest Access" if you want your friend or any other person on the network to be able to use a read-only anonymous account)

Your friend should be able to access your Samba share by exploring the network directly through the GNOME menu.
If that doesn't work out-of-the-box, try to install this package on both computers :
sudo apt-get install nautilus-share

nico

