Bring Your Own Media RELATED: There are some good free software packages for this, but you’ll need to bring your own media. If you have a large collection of local video and music files — perhaps and — this may be the ideal way to access that content on all your devices without relying on streaming services like Netflix and Spotify.

1. Build Home Server Computer
2. Revised Home Server Build For Mac

These apps often allow you to browse and access photos, too — perfect if you’re the type of person who keeps a local photo collection, too. Media Browser: Choose One RELATED: The two biggest solutions to recommend are probably. Both work similarly, offering a server you install on a desktop PC, laptop, NAS device, or dedicated home server. You could also try, formerly known as XBMC — it can be a bit more complicated to set up and works a bit differently.

Plex and Media Browser both offer servers that run on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, BSD,. You can install it on a desktop computer, a dedicated server, or get a pre-made NAS device that supports the server software. Plex offers clients for the Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox, and PlayStation platforms — as well as Chromecast support. They offer mobile apps for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows 8. There’s also a web interface and powerful Plex application for computers, if you hook up a computer to your TV.

Media Browser offers clients for the Roku and some other TV-streaming devices, including Chromecast support. There are also mobile apps for for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows 8. Want to use it on a computer? There’s a convenient web-based interface. Both have fairly similar features, although Plex definitely offers a more comprehensive suite of apps — PlayStation, Xbox, and Fire TV support, for example. However, some Plex services cost money.

Build Home Server Computer

The iOS Plex app costs $5, and the Xbox and PlayStation app both require a “Plex Pass” subscription that will cost you $5 a month. Media Browser and its apps are completely free, so there’s no monthly fee or per-app purchases you’ll have to deal with — then again, Media Browser doesn’t even offer PlayStation or Xbox support you could purchase if you wanted to. So, you’ll need to pick one — or, better yet, consider trying both and figuring out which one works best for you.

Set Up the Server, Install the Apps, and Start Streaming The setup process should just take a few minutes, no matter what server you choose to use. Install the Plex or Media Browser on your system of choice and set it up to point at your media.

Both Plex and Media Browser offer an optional account system, which can simplify signing into the mobile and TV apps and connecting to your server remotely over the Internet. You can then install the appropriate apps on your TV-streaming boxes, smartphones, and tablets. Use them to access your streaming media. This part is fairly easy. If you have a Chromecast, remember that you don’t need any special Plex or Media Browser app on your TV — you can install the appropriate app on your smartphone and then use it to cast media directly to your Chromecast. You’ll also need to run your own home server for this. If you have a desktop PC or laptop and are happy just accessing the server while your computer is running, you can just install the server software on your desktop computer.

You could also set up a dedicated server system to run the server, of course. That’d be a computer you could leave running all the time and even access your media server remotely over the Internet. It doesn’t have to be a full, high-powered computer — it could be a low-power, small-form-factor NAS device with a large hard drive for holding all those media files. Image Credit.

Scott Simpson has a master's in education and currently creates technology courses as an author at LinkedIn. Scott has been interested in computers since he was about seven years old, and for most of that time, he's been teaching friends, family, and strangers how to use them. This geeky hobby turned into a job with Apple during college, and after completing his master's degree in education at San Diego State University, he has helped to shape the Developer segment here at lynda.com as a content producer. Scott enjoys building web apps and exploring new technologies. He can be found on Twitter at. By: Scott Simpson course.

1h 42m 39s. 2,201 viewers. Course Transcript - The process of making a USB installer for Linux on the Mac is a little bit technical. There are two primary steps. Converting the image into a different format, and then writing that image to the disk. Each of these can take a few minutes, so keep that in mind.

Here in the terminal, I'm inside the downloads folder and I'll use the hdiutil tool to convert the image into a format called U-D-R-W. And then, save that as ubuntu.dmg. Alright, hdiutil, convert, format, UDRW. And then, start typing to auto-complete my ubuntu server installer.

Then, dash O for output and we'll write ubuntu.dmg. Now, I've got a new image here in my folder.

I need to get that image onto the USB disk. I can't just copy it.

I need to use a tool called D-D to create the installer. But first, I need to know the name of the USB drive. I'll open up disk utility here and I'll click over to the USB disk that I've plugged in, making sure to click on the device, not the volume. And down here on the bottom right, I can see this is named disk one.

It's important to get the right name, otherwise you could accidentally overwrite the wrong disk later on. In order to write information to this device, I need to unmount, but not eject, the volume on that disk. Ejecting it will get rid of it and disconnect it from the system, and I don't want that.

Now, I'll go back to the terminal and use the D-D command to write our newly converted image to the disk. But first, I'll clear the screen. Alright, sudo dd if=ubuntu.dmg that image we just created. And of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=1m. I-F stands for input file and O-F stands for output file. This is where it's important to get the right disk. So, double check if you're not sure and make sure you notice this R in front of the word disk here.

Revised Home Server Build For Mac

Using rdisk, instead of disk, writes to the raw device instead of the buffer. So, sometimes it goes quite a big faster.

And B-S here is block size. So, I'm writing one megabyte blocks to the disk. That's not necessary, but I find it helps with speed too. And, when the process is done, I'll actually get an error notice from the operating system saying it can't read the disk. That's a good sign. It means the information has been written in a format different from what Mac OS expects because it's a Linux format disk now.

So, I'll eject the disk and physically disconnect it from my system. And now, I'm ready to use the USB drive to install ubuntu on my server. Practice while you learn with exercise files.