If you’ve ever wanted to listen to headphones but not be completely deaf to your environment, linux can come to your rescue. This solution is with Ubuntu 10.04, with the pulseaudio volume control installed (pavucontrol – debian packages here, and it should be in the repositories for Ubuntu).
Make yourself a little script – mine’s called “hearsound.sh” – which consists of the following:
#!/bin/bash
parec | pacat
Then I configured an alias to spring up a nice little terminal window:
alias hear=’gnome-terminal –hide-menubar –title=listen –geometry=20×6 -x bash /path/to/script/hearsound.sh’
Invoke your script, and adjust the volume for pacat under pavucontrol. You now have passthrough audio, letting you hear your ambient environment!
(Mind you, the key tapping gets annoying on my laptop, but what the hey, right?)