Darwin Streaming Server works well on Linux, and on my preferred platform CentOS 5, but not without compiling it yourself. Linux is not a supported platform in the code provided by Apple, but fortunately a patched version of the source has been provided by a member of the DSS community.
To use Darwin Streaming Server on CentOS 5, follow these steps:
1) Get and install RPM building tools and the source RPM:
yum install rpm-build gcc make gcc-c++ perl-Net-SSLeay
wget http://www.abrahamsson.com/DarwinStreamingServer-6.0.3-2.src.rpm
rpm -i DarwinStreamingServer-6.0.3-2.src.rpm
2) Build the source RPM:
cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/
rpmbuild -bb DarwinStreamingServer.spec
3) Install the built RPM:
cd /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/x86_64/
rpm -U DarwinStreamingServer*
4) The install will hang after warning you to change the password with qtpasswd (you certainly should do so), resolve it by killing the DSS daemon from another shell session:
killall -9 DarwinStreamingServer
And that’s it. There are plenty of resources out there for using and configuring DSS that can take you from here, but you can find the config at /etc/dss/streamingserver.xml, the logs are at /var/log/dss/ and the video files are at /var/dss/movies. By loading rstp://<yourserver>:554/sample_100kbit.mp4 you can verify everything is working.