On 4/2/2010 3:35 AM, Markus wrote:
Am Freitag 02 April 2010 04:09:00 schrieb Marc Chamberlin:
running under SuSE11.2 x86_64, KDE 4.4.2
I guess you mean openSUSE 11.2 with KDE SC 4.4.2. "SuSE" and "KDE 4" are long dead.
ALSA
The Linux sound architecture.
ESOUND,
Not installed by default. Not needed. Dead.
JACK,
Not installed by default. Not needed.
OSS,
Not installed by default. Not needed.
ESD,
Not installed by default. Not needed. Dead.
aRTs,
Not installed by default. Not needed. Dead.
PULSEAUDIO,
Not installed by default. Not needed. Sucks.
GSTREAMER,
Codec architecture which just uses ALSA. No need to configure it.
PHONON
KDE's abstraction layer. Only of interest for developers. No need to configure it.
and tools like XINE, KAFFEINE, MYTHTV and MPLAYER which go off in their own directions... codecs to locate... I mean seriously folks, for a user to set up and configure a sound system this is getting out of control! How to choose? What to choose? What and how to configure? What to install?
Just live with the default install and don't try to mess with it. If you don't mess with it, it works fine.
Thanks Markus for your input, you have an "interesting" view on things.... But No, the default install did NOT work for me, and applying obvious/intuitive solutions did NOT work for me either. When I brought up openSuSE for the first time, I did NOT have any sound period. Yet I knew the computer hardware was working fine as I can dual boot to Windoz where sound would work. This left me with the daunting task of trying to figure out what had gone wrong. So off I went to try and explore and understand how the sound architecture works to see what and where something could go wrong. And THAT is when I, or any other user will come face to face with, and be appalled by, all these different layers, trying to read, comprehend and follow what each is all about. Bringing up my sound system, and some of the various tools/applications did not involve a single point of failure either. Instead I had to hunt and experiment by trial and error, ask lots and lots of questions, got lots of various qualities of answers, and encountered lots of confusion by others as well. It was a frustrating experience, sometimes I would get one piece working, like ALSA after I finally tracked down the problem to a misconfigured KMIX with hidden controls, only to have it fail on me again later, for mysterious reasons as I tried to get yet another tool (Amarok, Kaffeine yada yada) up and running... I am not arguing about the need to fix any particular bug, nor am I arguing for the need to remove any of these layers, I am sure each brings to the user/application developer unique and valuable features. What I am arguing for is the need for a much simpler model of the sound architecture that works as an integrated whole and can be presented to the user in such a way that is easy for him/her to understand and modify/control as needed. To accomplish that will require oversight by a small elite team of system architects. Most large software projects usually come with such a core team that can set guidelines and standards, and make sure subprojects and components comply with the overall architectural vision. IMHO this seems to be missing, over all of the releases of openSuSE that I have installed, (which goes back for quite a few years now) I am not seeing the sound system getting simpler, instead it is getting harder to understand... KDE is one of the major presentation layers to users, so to me this group seems like a good place to start such a discussion. It is from this desktop model (and others as well) that the user will be presented with the model of the sound architecture, and with the major tools on how to set it up and get various applications working. And I cannot say that I have ever felt that the tools such as YaST, or the Systems Managers of KDE have ever presented me with the right set of guides and models to successfully get these various sound applications to work in a straight-forward manner... Marc...