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Linux is not about choice (2008)

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Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#181

Post by bkor »

nisa wrote: post #124
ctdonath wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the proliferation of choices that's the problem, its that so many of those choices don't work.

And that many choices are not documented in an accessible way. Even default choices. People complaining that desktop Linux is full of bugs and does not work. I think it works pretty well now, but the lack of man pages for anything desktop related is just sad. I'd like to understand how this works so that I'm able to fix it. But I can't easily I have to resort to wild googling, joining others in forums trying to decip…

ConsoleKit at least is deprecated. For the others, not sure if why you'd expect man files for them. They're just services, not something you'd run manually. If you make your intent clear, file a bug on it.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#182

Post by jeltz »

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 me it is. I had to uninstall pulseaudio to get sound to work at my Debian Wheezy machine. With alsa though it has worked without any problems. And yes, I am a lazy bastard who has not reported the bug.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#183

Post by eropple »

sethrin wrote: post #144
quasive wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely unacceptable, and the main reason I still use a SoundBlaster Live instead of my onboard sound. The SBLive can do hardware mixing and the Linux driver makes this transparent, so even OSS programs can run simultaneously. ALSA is supposed to be able to do this transparently (in software) with dmix, but in my experience that only works with ALSA-aware programs, not those using the OSS API. I don't care…

>I don't care that xxxx is deprecated: it should just work. Setting aside the concept of extrapolating from a small sample size using an admittedly deprecated system (on apparently poor hardware) which hasn't seen any significant use this decade, to "Linux sound is still obnoxious"... The temerity of insisting that any deprecated software work perfectly is appalling. I am sad to say that my imagination does not stret…

Most users tend to assume that things that work will continue working. This is not an unreasonable assumption. It is the status quo on Windows and, whether you or I like it or not (I don't really mind, but whatever), that's the measuring stick for Linux-on-the-desktop. That Linux does not have the same track record with regards to backwards compatibility is not a failing in the user. You don't have to fix their problem, but don't wax on about their "temerity". That makes you a dick.

As is common in pretty much every endeavor, people trump process. OSS still exists and for a decent bit of legacy software isn't going away anytime soon. Breaking it screws over users. Screwing over users makes them complain. Putting on a song and dance about how "appalled" you are at users' complaints makes you a jerk. Don't be a jerk.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#185

Post by bkor »

peterwwillis wrote: post #36
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…

My sound card "mostly" worked when I installed Linux this year. But I spent a week researching to finally deduce how to modify my Skype and Alsa configs by hand to get Skype to use the microphone. I still don't remember what I did, though it had to do with setting a specific hardware type id. Nobody should ever have to do that.

Skype works out of the box with PulseAudio. No setup or settings required.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#186

Post by bkor »

mpyne wrote: post #120
a1a wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To summarize: 1. Remove your entire desktop environment, 2. Install just a window manager, 3. Now you don't have any program handling your sound, you just removed it, remember? (see (1) for reference), 4. Post on HN: "Yes, sound is still a problem."

KDE doesn't provide sound, just like KDE doesn't provide graphics drivers. I'm not sure why you feel sound support should be a function of the desktop environment.

KDE has Phonon. KDE doesn't have sound drivers, but it should have a mixer, it does have Phonon, etc.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#187

Post by bkor »

quasive wrote: post #112
Udo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is absolutely unacceptable, and the main reason I still use a SoundBlaster Live instead of my onboard sound. The SBLive can do hardware mixing and the Linux driver makes this transparent, so even OSS programs can run simultaneously. ALSA is supposed to be able to do this transparently (in software) with dmix, but in my experience that only works with ALSA-aware programs, not those using the OSS API. I don't care…

This just works if you use PulseAudio. OSS and ALSA applications are routed through PulseAudio.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#188

Post by bkor »

innguest wrote: post #106
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." "Not really." "Linux sound hasn't been a problem for some of us for, oh, I don't know, well over 10 years" "Sound on Linux wasn't a problem 5 years ago. In fact, it wasn't a problem even earlier." "Sound setup bad? Not compared to 5 or 10 years ago, no. During that period (I can guarantee!) both Win and OSX were ALSO -miserable- experiences." "No, sound is not a problem on Linux. I wonder if it eve…

You have that with any topic. If you want to be credible, investigate which percentage of people have problems. That is an interesting statistic.

Compare to this: You want to buy a new laptop. You'll see various complaints. Maybe even the same amount of complaints for company X and company Y. This doesn't at all indicate a problem. However, if company X has 0.1% laptop market share and company Y has 40% market share, I'd go for company Y (same amount of complaints vs bigger usage).

Or in other words: Suggesting "there is a problem" as well as "there is not a problem" is both useless. Loads of distributions use PulseAudio by default btw. :P

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#190

Post by bkor »

virtualwhys wrote: post #178
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…

pulseaudio -k Was more than helpful pre-Fedora 18 in dealing with sound issues; now, things are pretty good. Gnome 3 on the other hand, wow, fail whale on many fronts ;-)

Read the title of the article. GNOME relies on PulseAudio. If thinks break when you break a desktop environments expectations, it should not be surprising.
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