Linux is not about choice (2008) • Hacker News Board

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#91

Post by wtetzner » Mon, May 06, 2013, 9:19 PM UTC

ethomson wrote: post #76

glesica wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You have to be joking me. "A distro that is designed for the WM you want to use"? What does that even mean? That I have to have a special twm distro? Or an fvwm2 distribution? tvtwm was always my favorite window manager, but I seem to recall it needed some patches to really be perfect. Do I have to find somebody to build me my own distribution that has those patches? A Window Manager manages windows, like the name su…

I think part of the problem here is that window managers and desktop environments are being conflated.

Desktop environments are sometimes set up to handle sound or networking.

I agree that it's not a good design, but I don't think it's as ridiculous for a desktop environment to handle these things as it is for a window manager to do so.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#92

Post by gue5t » Mon, May 06, 2013, 9:33 PM UTC

papsosouid wrote: post #65

gue5t wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>though if I'm not mistaken it's still the preferred solution for BSD and therefore often available as an option I believe you are mistaken. The BSDs have always avoided all the freakish audio framework nonsense from linux land. They provide an API that is somewhat compatible with OSS to allow software with linuxisms like assuming OSS to function. That API is a wrapper around the real audio system: http://www.openbsd…

Huh, interesting. I'm not very familiar with any of the BSDs, thanks!

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#93

Post by drveen » Mon, May 06, 2013, 9:37 PM UTC

Udo wrote: post #88

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, it is. I use Linux servers mostly, but about a year ago I installed openSuSE on two new desktops. The problem was that, while sound "worked" in general, only one application could use the sound card at a time. That means when you have your audio player open, Youtube won't work at the same time. You'd have to close both apps and then re-open the browser so it could then hog the audio. The most annoying thing abou…

I've been running openSuSE desktops for years. When pulse became standard, I made a practice of ripping it out (rpm -e...). I've happily had plain ALSA sound with sound from multiple apps at once. No, I don't know the details - only that it works. YMMV.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#94

Post by gcb0 » Mon, May 06, 2013, 9:39 PM UTC

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."

well, it's only a problem because sound was never done the linux way. i.e it was never done with choice in mind.

so yes, linux is about choice. sound implementations are not. so they give every linux user hell.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#95

Post by gcb0 » Mon, May 06, 2013, 9:41 PM UTC

yebyen wrote: post #70

aerique wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

Is there still debian testing, or are you calling 'wheezy' as testing? Just wondering I thought the way it was supposed to work was, when testing gets re-tagged as stable, there's no 'testing' for a brief period (month?) until the next planned distro release is named.

wheezy is a version alias for v7.

testing is testing. it points to the version that is on testing, be it 7-wheezy, or 8-whatever.

the only exception to the rule is 'sid'. debian sid is always the bleeding edge, it never becomes a proper version.

btw, i hate every versioning alias scheme that does not force the number to appear. such as debian, ubuntu, android... it's all just idiotic.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#96

Post by cjh_ » Mon, May 06, 2013, 9:45 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #67

VLM wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats a huge failure of abstraction. File a bug. A window manager should manage windows not sound. Someone outside the linux community would have no idea that the thing that controls title bars also happens to control sound. On Debian with ratpoison / awesome / KDE / probably others it "just works" and you don't control your sound with your window or whatever. It would be like configuring your mouse by modifying your…

>A window manager should manage windows not sound Here in the real world a desktop environment like Unity is a whoe lot more than just a window manager. It includes system management and configuration GUI components, including preferences panes and utilities to control audio functions. Unity is trying to provide a comprehensive user interface to the entire OS, or as much of it as possible.

>Here in the real world a desktop environment like Unity is a whole lot more than just a window manager.

That is why we distinguish between 'window manager' (only manages windows) and 'desktop environment' (a whole lot more).

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#97

Post by mindcrime » Mon, May 06, 2013, 9:46 PM UTC

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…

ETA: Seems the answer is "yes".

More like "it depends" or maybe "if you want it to be". For the vast majority of basic use cases (listening to music using XMMS, Rhythmbox, Youtube videos, etc.) it usually "just works" with most recent Linux distros on most non-esoteric hardware. At least that's been my experience using that last 5 or 6 Fedora releases, on a variety of hardware.

Now, if you want to get into fiddling with JACK vs. PulseAudio and tweaking ALSA, etc., then you can get into some complicated shit, most of which I don't understand, which I why I just leave it alone. But, I'm not doing specialized audio production and editing stuff either. That's a whole different world, which I can't speak to at all.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#98

Post by rbanffy » Mon, May 06, 2013, 9:47 PM UTC

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…

For everyone claiming sound is a problem, there are dozens of users for whom it just works. Most of them are not passionate enough about sound to say it just works.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#99

Post by MostAwesomeDude » Mon, May 06, 2013, 9:47 PM UTC

Ctrl+F "ajax" isn't finding anything, so...

The poster here goes by "ajax" on more useful communication channels (i.e. IRC). He's one of the most competent hackers I've ever been able to work with, and his ethos comes through loud and clear here: If code is broken, fix it. If code is being misused, stop abusing it. If code is missing, write it.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#100

Post by cjh_ » Mon, May 06, 2013, 9:48 PM UTC

ethomson wrote: post #76

glesica wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You have to be joking me. "A distro that is designed for the WM you want to use"? What does that even mean? That I have to have a special twm distro? Or an fvwm2 distribution? tvtwm was always my favorite window manager, but I seem to recall it needed some patches to really be perfect. Do I have to find somebody to build me my own distribution that has those patches? A Window Manager manages windows, like the name su…

I think GP's point was that you either 'deal with it' or find someone else (a packager for a distribution) to deal with it on your behalf, if you are having issues then a distribution is a possible solution.