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Linux is not about choice (2008)

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Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#31

Post by Kaivo »

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…

I recently had trouble with my sound card on Arch Linux. Upon booting, once in a while, my default sound output would change and not work even after I'd edit it. Turns out it was my card model that wasn't supported and I just removed it. I've been working with the on-board output since then and everything is going just fine.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#32

Post by danielweber »

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, 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 getting sick and tired of Unity and tried to put something else in place. Everything went to shit at that point. Now I am back at Unity.)

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#33

Post by rlu »

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.

I have a netbook running xubuntu and when I connect it to a TV via HDMI, the sound continues to come from the netbook rather than from the TV.

I googled for some fixes and couldn't find any quick fix that worked.

This should "just work" in my opinion. It does in Windows and I'm sure OSX makes it just as painless.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#34

Post by Jtsummers »

plutr wrote: post #16
cag_ii wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If just as relevant today as it was then, why shouldn't it be?

Because the point of a news site is to deliver information that is both new and interesting to the reader. If something is from 5 years ago, it is drastically more likely that the reader either knows it already or is not interested, as opposed to things that are, say, less than a month old. Especially if that information was reposted constantly, as that logic would allow.

Along with being a news site this is also a discussion site. If the article is new to the reader or leads to discussion that interests the reader, then they're free to upvote it. When it's not, they can ignore it (or flag it if it truly doesn't belong). It's really that simple.

When links get posted that have no relevance to you, just move on. Post links that are relevant to your interests or wait for someone else to do it for you.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#35

Post by readme »

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.

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 configure my sound card driver manually for an old creative soundblaster about 10 years ago. Further, back in those days it was not at all obvious how to get Linux to even play an MP3 (I know, this is an audio encoding and not related to the audio subsystem, but my point is: it was hard. These days you just install a mainstream distro and mp3 codec is there.)

Linux has come a tremendous way in the last 10 years.

Don't you remember the nightmares? Editing Xorg.conf, and such? But wait, I remember when it was still called XF86Config. /me shudders

Today anyone can pop in an ubuntu dvd and be rolling in seconds with all hardware working (for a lot of systems*). Not long ago we had to research our hardware and hunt down solutions just to get a working machine.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#36

Post by peterwwillis »

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…

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.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#37

Post by theon144 »

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…

Not really. Regarding "usual" sound, I haven't had a problem for years now, and just a while ago I actually set up a fairly complex system with JACK for a music performance I was preparing (midi controllers each connected to a specific synth software, some of that straight to output, some of it to looper software first, along with the mic input, etc.) and I was surprised at how smooth it all went.

I really think Linux left that behind in 2008 :)

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#38

Post by dman »

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…

"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 times I tried.

Having said all of this, I wonder if its reasonable to expect a distro to handle the situation where you completely swap out the user land that they ship with. The equivalent does not exist for windows / osx.

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#39

Post by IanChiles »

frozenport wrote: post #19

Big distros don't use Linux how Linux developers use Linux. The guys that write Linux software always have the latest version and test against them. Once I switched to Gentoo I have a rock solid system with the latest and greatest software packages. Every week I update all my software and my laptop has been running on the same install for 2 years, with Ubuntu some random nonsense would fail every 6 months and with SU…

Gentoo and Arch are wonderful for staying absolutely up to date. Far better IMO than anything else - but for anything production wise or mission critical, nothing comes close to Debian, RHEL/CentOS, and SuSe

Re: Linux is not about choice (2008)

#40

Post by dman »

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.

Which distro? What sound hardware?
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