dmizer
October 25th, 2006, 09:20 AM
i want to rant. those who wish to disagree, fine. those who wish to agree, fine. i'm just so completely frustrated that i need to say something before i can move on.
i hate sound.
actually, i love sound. i played string bass all through high school and college, and i still plink now and again. but this is all in fun, and as far as i view the world ... it's extra-curricular. especially when it comes to digital sound. mp3's? please, i cringe when i hear that slop.
so actually, to be more precise ... i hate digital sound.
but sound is so essential to the computer world. announcements, alerts, and general day to day activities all require sound to work. also, today's internet is a media based experience. video and sound are everywhere.
but getting sound to work in ubuntu (and linux in general) has been the single most frustratingly impossible thing i've ever attempted to undertake.
the comprehensive sound solutions guide (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=205449) has never ceased to be extremely helpful on each new install i do. but this is pages of cli editing, and still only works if you cross your fingers juuuuust right.
so let me tell you what i love about configuring linux:
i love configuring X.
why?
it's cake! just 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg' and click through the options. select your monitor and shezam, you have a working desktop. if you want more than the basics (3d, compiz etc), of course you should expect to have to do more configuration, but to get working video is nothing. one command and answer questions.
i know many people will disagree with me on this, but that's not my point here. my point is that this kind of simplicity is what i want with my sound.
i want to 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure alsa-server' answer questions and have two sound devices work in harmony, my skype (now with alsa support by default) to work, keep gaim sounds from crashing the system, while still being able to hear my mail notification.
but alsa isn't even installed by default ... it's oss. which in my experience so far ... has been buggy and unreliable at the best of times, and system haltingly bad at others. i have to spend weeks configuring everything, and still i have issues.
i hate sound, and it has recently been making me consider giving flying lessons to several of my machines.
to end on an upbeat (but completely unrelated) note:
after a year of beating my brain into bloody bits, with the help of this genius (http://mambo.kuhp.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~takushi/canon-pixus25.html) i finally successfully printed my first test page directly from ubuntu.
i hate sound.
actually, i love sound. i played string bass all through high school and college, and i still plink now and again. but this is all in fun, and as far as i view the world ... it's extra-curricular. especially when it comes to digital sound. mp3's? please, i cringe when i hear that slop.
so actually, to be more precise ... i hate digital sound.
but sound is so essential to the computer world. announcements, alerts, and general day to day activities all require sound to work. also, today's internet is a media based experience. video and sound are everywhere.
but getting sound to work in ubuntu (and linux in general) has been the single most frustratingly impossible thing i've ever attempted to undertake.
the comprehensive sound solutions guide (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=205449) has never ceased to be extremely helpful on each new install i do. but this is pages of cli editing, and still only works if you cross your fingers juuuuust right.
so let me tell you what i love about configuring linux:
i love configuring X.
why?
it's cake! just 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg' and click through the options. select your monitor and shezam, you have a working desktop. if you want more than the basics (3d, compiz etc), of course you should expect to have to do more configuration, but to get working video is nothing. one command and answer questions.
i know many people will disagree with me on this, but that's not my point here. my point is that this kind of simplicity is what i want with my sound.
i want to 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure alsa-server' answer questions and have two sound devices work in harmony, my skype (now with alsa support by default) to work, keep gaim sounds from crashing the system, while still being able to hear my mail notification.
but alsa isn't even installed by default ... it's oss. which in my experience so far ... has been buggy and unreliable at the best of times, and system haltingly bad at others. i have to spend weeks configuring everything, and still i have issues.
i hate sound, and it has recently been making me consider giving flying lessons to several of my machines.
to end on an upbeat (but completely unrelated) note:
after a year of beating my brain into bloody bits, with the help of this genius (http://mambo.kuhp.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~takushi/canon-pixus25.html) i finally successfully printed my first test page directly from ubuntu.