4 ms·

And yet as of 2015, getting sound to work properly is still a crapshoot. Artsd was a major pain 13 years ago, I'm sure pulseaudio has more features today, but i

And yet as of 2015, getting sound to work properly is still a crapshoot. Artsd was a major pain 13 years ago, I'm sure pulseaudio has more features today, but it's still an intractable mess.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
What is on in your end that sound is still such an issue? Admittedly my system is PulseAudio-free with only one exception, that being Skype. I should consider using a compatibility layer like apulse that just multiplexes ALSA calls under the hood.
- murbard2 11y ago
  I've been using Linux as my primary desktop OS for about 15 years, and sound has always been a pain to deal with. I used S/PDIF on my last machine, and it took me months of browsing through endless threads to get the thing to work properly. Skype just won't play any sound as of my last install, I have no idea why, I've given up on it. To get my last monitor to work properly, I had to manually enter modelines in xorg.conf. If the monitor goes in powersave mode, the full resolution won't be available until I restart X. (It's a Seiki 4K TV, not standard by any means, but hardly "exotic") Honestly, at this point, I wouldn't recommend desktop Linux to anyone normal, I just tell them to get an Apple computer.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    IIRC I remedied my Skype installation by uncommenting the hardware detection modules (udev and static) in default.pa(5). You could try starting it from the apulse shim, alternatively. I'll agree PulseAudio is esoteric, but thankfully not that many client applications have a hard dependency on it, though it is popular with integrated DEs.
    - murbard2 11y ago
      Thanks for the Skype tip, I'll try that. But the fact that I need a tip on HN to know which config files to edit to get Skype working is precisely why Linux on the Desktop isn't quite there yet :) (the fault may very well lie with Skype, but from a user experience standpoint, that's irrelevant)
fernandotakai 11y ago
my sound worked out of the box with pulseaudio -- installed the package, added start-pulseaudio-x11 to my ~/.xprofile (arch doesn't have anything by default), and it worked. even skype (!) worked out of the box (both speakers and microphones).

And yet as of 2015, getting sound to work properly is still a crapshoot. Artsd was a major pain 13 years ago, I'm sure pulseaudio has more features today, but it's still an intractable mess.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

What is on in your end that sound is still such an issue? Admittedly my system is PulseAudio-free with only one exception, that being Skype. I should consider using a compatibility layer like apulse that just multiplexes ALSA calls under the hood.

murbard2 11y ago
I've been using Linux as my primary desktop OS for about 15 years, and sound has always been a pain to deal with. I used S/PDIF on my last machine, and it took me months of browsing through endless threads to get the thing to work properly. Skype just won't play any sound as of my last install, I have no idea why, I've given up on it. To get my last monitor to work properly, I had to manually enter modelines in xorg.conf. If the monitor goes in powersave mode, the full resolution won't be available until I restart X. (It's a Seiki 4K TV, not standard by any means, but hardly "exotic") Honestly, at this point, I wouldn't recommend desktop Linux to anyone normal, I just tell them to get an Apple computer.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  IIRC I remedied my Skype installation by uncommenting the hardware detection modules (udev and static) in default.pa(5). You could try starting it from the apulse shim, alternatively. I'll agree PulseAudio is esoteric, but thankfully not that many client applications have a hard dependency on it, though it is popular with integrated DEs.
  - murbard2 11y ago
    Thanks for the Skype tip, I'll try that. But the fact that I need a tip on HN to know which config files to edit to get Skype working is precisely why Linux on the Desktop isn't quite there yet :) (the fault may very well lie with Skype, but from a user experience standpoint, that's irrelevant)

fernandotakai 11y ago

my sound worked out of the box with pulseaudio -- installed the package, added start-pulseaudio-x11 to my ~/.xprofile (arch doesn't have anything by default), and it worked. even skype (!) worked out of the box (both speakers and microphones).