Concept and Function

This desktop uses Avahi/Zeroconf wherever possible to make the discovery of services simple.

• It's a basic Gnome desktop.
• It can see and connect to the shares on the D2D server by opening Places > Networking. Simply right-click to connect to the share.
• It uses the Giver application to simply send files to other clients on the network.
• It has a Bonjour IM client to chat with other clients on the network.
• In addition to using shared directories on the server, easy file sharing between clients happens with Gnome User Share.
• It comes with Conduit, and easy-to-understand backup/sync solution which connects to the server's Backup/ directory effortlessly.
• It uses the server's apt cache to update and save bandwidth.
• It uses Rhythmbox to play music from the server with no configuration. Users can even define their libraries as the server share.
• Users share music with each other using Rhythmbox's DAAP plugin.
• Epiphany automatically shows any websites installed on the server, such as eGroupware.

The future is bright. F-Spot will soon support DAPP. Gnome Office will support zeroconf-aware collaboration. I'm still looking for a way to get a video playlist automatically, though.

Download and installation

Firstly, you need to be running Lenny. Etch or Ubuntu won't work. The hostname must not be debian.local unless the d2dserver is running on the same machine.

Install GDebi, then use that to install the d2dclient.deb located at the bottom of this page.

It will install the following applications:

• gnome, 
• empathy and telepathy-salut, 
• giver, 
• conduit, 
• gnome-user-share, 
• gnome-office, 
• ttf-liberation, 
• gnome-office, 
• service-discovery-applet