ubuntu

When creating command-line applications, the user is usually present at the terminal to provide commands to the application and read its output. This is called interactive mode. But sometimes, you want to start a long-running program in the background, so it runs while you're not present. This is called daemon mode, and the programs themselves are usually called daemons. Daemons? In contrast to their mythical counterpart, daemons under Unix are usually much more benign....

PulseAudio has been the standard sound system in Ubuntu for several versions now, and seems to be replacing, or rather supplementing, ALSA and OSS. Its main benefits (for me) are: per application sound levels, and streaming to a remote PulseAudio instance over network. At home, I have a HTPC running Xubuntu with XBMC hooked up to my stereo. Because I usually control XBMC using my Android phone, I have no mouse or keyboard attached....