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Linux is not about choice (2008)

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Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#51

Post by Thrymr »

ctdonath wrote: post #18
rayiner wrote: post #2

Epic: "But the chain of logic from 'Linux is about choice' to 'ship everything and let the user chose how they want their sound to not work' starts with fallacy and ends with disaster."

Is sound still a problem on Linux? I realize the article is about 5 years old, but Linux has been around for a long time now, and sound is a really basic function I'd expect even obtuse geeks would want to solve. If it is still a problem, seems that's a definitive concise example of why Linux can't win the OS wars: some things must work, even if nobody wants the task of making it work; sometimes the only solution is…

> Is sound still a problem on Linux?

Yes. My desktop has mostly just worked for a few upgrades now, but new versions on my HTPC running XBMCbuntu have been hit and miss and taken some screwing around with the sound.

This article from less than a year ago addresses some basic screw-ups that people on linux do trying to fix their sound troubles: http://voices.canonical.com/david.henningsson/2012/07/13/top... That rings true to me.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#52

Post by throwaway1980 »

ctdonath wrote: post #18
rayiner wrote: post #2

Epic: "But the chain of logic from 'Linux is about choice' to 'ship everything and let the user chose how they want their sound to not work' starts with fallacy and ends with disaster."

Is sound still a problem on Linux? I realize the article is about 5 years old, but Linux has been around for a long time now, and sound is a really basic function I'd expect even obtuse geeks would want to solve. If it is still a problem, seems that's a definitive concise example of why Linux can't win the OS wars: some things must work, even if nobody wants the task of making it work; sometimes the only solution is…

Yes, also problems with wireless/wired network card drivers and DVD playback are common. These are the kinds of things where you've just gotten them working, then you upgrade your distro and they stop working again. In theory they all probably work, even for your hardware, but getting the right versions of all the software necessary running at once on your machine is a pain.

It doesn't have anything to do with paying the people who work on Linux, it's that the manufacturers of these devices don't have a commercial interest in making their hardware work in 30 different Linux distributions. They do have an interest in their products working flawlessly on all versions of OS X and Windows, and so they do what it takes to make it happen.

Linux-based systems are great, but not when it comes to desktops where productivity is the point. They are good for desktops where tinkering and copyleft are the point. They are obviously a superior choice for anything that isn't a desktop.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#53

Post by glesica »

danielweber wrote: post #44
dman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I tried to change window managers on My Ubuntu desktop and totally lost sound." - Once you do something as drastic as changing the default window manager on a distro you are largely on your own. In the past switching window managers would leave you without a network connection because Network Manager applet would begin after you login into gnome. However this appears to be fixed and was not an issue the last few tim…

Then all the answers about "Unity isn't so bad, because you can switch away from it" become void.

You can switch away from it, you just can't do it with "apt-get install ". Try a distro that is designed for the WM you want to use.

I agree that in an ideal world installing a new WM would "Just Work", but we don't live in that world. Try installing a new WM on OS X or Windows and see how well things go. Not trashing those operating systems, just pointing out that GNU/Linux does, indeed, offer more choice. The fact that the choices are not ideally convenient to switch between is really a fairly minor issue.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#54

Post by aerique »

gue5t wrote: post #27
ctdonath wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is sound still a problem on Linux? I realize the article is about 5 years old, but Linux has been around for a long time now, and sound is a really basic function I'd expect even obtuse geeks would want to solve. If it is still a problem, seems that's a definitive concise example of why Linux can't win the OS wars: some things must work, even if nobody wants the task of making it work; sometimes the only solution is…

It really isn't. Unless you have a card without a driver (exceedingly rare, though it's not uncommon to need a recent kernel to use recent hardware) ALSA pretty much Just Works. For complex features like streaming sound over the network you need PulseAudio, which due to its complexity takes more configuration and setup, but that's done out of the box on a fair number of distros. I don't know of any major software tha…

As a non-professional, I use a non-realtime JACK as the new ESD. I prefer that over the incomprehensible monster that PulseAudio is.

My needs are simple: I want sound from my audio player (MOC), from my browser (f.e. Youtube), from games and they shouldn't interfere. So my audio player shouldn't have exclusive access to the device and prevent me from hearing Youtube at the same time.

JACK does all this, is easy to configure and doesn't get in the way.

edit: I should mention I run Debian Testing and prefer to stay away from big desktop environment like Gnome (do we see a trend here?).

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#55

Post by CatMtKing »

gue5t wrote: post #27
ctdonath wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is sound still a problem on Linux? I realize the article is about 5 years old, but Linux has been around for a long time now, and sound is a really basic function I'd expect even obtuse geeks would want to solve. If it is still a problem, seems that's a definitive concise example of why Linux can't win the OS wars: some things must work, even if nobody wants the task of making it work; sometimes the only solution is…

It really isn't. Unless you have a card without a driver (exceedingly rare, though it's not uncommon to need a recent kernel to use recent hardware) ALSA pretty much Just Works. For complex features like streaming sound over the network you need PulseAudio, which due to its complexity takes more configuration and setup, but that's done out of the box on a fair number of distros. I don't know of any major software tha…

PulseAudio still gives me pain. There's an intel-hda driver issue https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=920549 that has a workaround, but the workaround only f's up other programs for me.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#56

Post by teeja »

readme wrote: post #35
kfk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, sound is not a problem on Linux. I wonder if it ever was actually.

It was. Before pulseaudio became the de-facto standard lots of people wouldn't even install an additional layer and use plain old alsa. Which meant you couldn't change the volumes of applications individually. You could have used artsd, esd, or something else, but the problem was that there shouldn't be 3 bad solutions to choose from. There should be one good solution. I remember installing redhat 9 and having to con…

Really. I just installed LM LXDE 11 on an ancient PC the other day that had a Soundblaster card covered in dust. Started up an MP3 and started plugging a 1/8" plug into holes on the back. When I got to the SB card, bingo. No install, no prefs ... just worked.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#57

Post by keithpeter »

danielweber wrote: post #32
ctdonath wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is sound still a problem on Linux? I realize the article is about 5 years old, but Linux has been around for a long time now, and sound is a really basic function I'd expect even obtuse geeks would want to solve. If it is still a problem, seems that's a definitive concise example of why Linux can't win the OS wars: some things must work, even if nobody wants the task of making it work; sometimes the only solution is…

Yes, sound is still a problem. I tried to change window managers on My Ubuntu desktop and totally lost sound. I am well past the age of my life where there is anything productive about spending hours of my day futzing with sound drivers. I know how drivers work. I'm not becoming any better at working with computers by deciphering this year's way of sound not working with Linux. (It did work out of the box. I was gett…

Ubuntu 12.04: I managed to have Unity and XFCE working as alternative 'sessions' along with DWM (with a .desktop file pointing at a start up script for the latter). I recollect some issues about different sound applets changing configs but sound would work under all three sessions.

I now use an Ubuntustudio install (13.04 with the default XFCE desktop). Sound just works, and detected my three sound output devices fine, and allows me to choose which one to use.

I quite like Unity but the bugs around LibreOffice global menu integration in 13.04 (with the resulting loss of highlighting of menu choices and the lack of 'accelerator key' menu selection) means I'm sitting this release out.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#58

Post by greyfade »

kfk wrote: post #21
ctdonath wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is sound still a problem on Linux? I realize the article is about 5 years old, but Linux has been around for a long time now, and sound is a really basic function I'd expect even obtuse geeks would want to solve. If it is still a problem, seems that's a definitive concise example of why Linux can't win the OS wars: some things must work, even if nobody wants the task of making it work; sometimes the only solution is…

No, sound is not a problem on Linux. I wonder if it ever was actually.

For many years, the API incompatibility between OSS and ALSA made getting sound working at all was often a nightmarish task. There were a number of sound servers that tried to alleviate the problem, but they all used incompatible APIs and couldn't be used in parallel.

It was, and is, awful.

It's only very, very recently that PulseAudio has gotten to the point where it works most of the time, and it still has major unresolved problems.

And there are still programs that use the OSS and ALSA APIs directly. While it does work fairly well, there are still incompatibility issues with programs that use Pulse.

It's ludicrous to suggest that there are no problems.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#59

Post by npsimons »

glesica wrote: post #48
ctdonath wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is sound still a problem on Linux? I realize the article is about 5 years old, but Linux has been around for a long time now, and sound is a really basic function I'd expect even obtuse geeks would want to solve. If it is still a problem, seems that's a definitive concise example of why Linux can't win the OS wars: some things must work, even if nobody wants the task of making it work; sometimes the only solution is…

Linux is already winning the OS wars, it's called Android ;-) Just being snarky, I get your point. I've said this before, and I think it is important to keep in mind when discussing GNU/Linux: things work quite well... on supported hardware. The vast majority of tales of woe related to GNU/Linux and hardware end up coming down to incompatible hardware. This is a communication problem, not a technical problem. No one…

GNU/Linux evangelists, on the other hand, have, in the past especially, had a tendency to sell their operating system as magical software that works on every machine always. This is, of course, totally false.

It's not totally false; Linux will work on almost everything, most of the time. While I'll second the notion that you should really, really, really, really make sure that your hardware is supported before you buy the hardware, I think I can safely say that the range of driver support in the Linux kernel is unparalleled. The only other OS that even competes (and for that, only CPU architectures) is NetBSD. In my experience, if Linux doesn't support a piece of hardware out of the box, you had better dump that hardware, because brother, that hardware won't be supported by anything.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#60

Post by dman »

danielweber wrote: post #44
dman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I tried to change window managers on My Ubuntu desktop and totally lost sound." - Once you do something as drastic as changing the default window manager on a distro you are largely on your own. In the past switching window managers would leave you without a network connection because Network Manager applet would begin after you login into gnome. However this appears to be fixed and was not an issue the last few tim…

Then all the answers about "Unity isn't so bad, because you can switch away from it" become void.

There are no magic elves and fairies lower down in the stack.

Reliable user experiences come from

a) Reducing degrees of freedom - remove the number of things the end user can tweak / change (the mac way)

b) Monopolistic fiat - Publishing standards and strong arming vendors into supporting those (the wintel way)

Linux tries to approximate reliability using a "many eyes make bugs shallow" approach. However this kind of reliability is stochastic. Think of it as a gaussian centered around the defaults that ship out of the box on hardware that is fairly commonplace. The more you push your end config away from that center the more likely it is that you will have a suboptimal experience.

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