Re: Gnome vs. KDE with ALSA

[Mike S <michael_six@users.sourceforge.net>]

jason kahn wrote:

> hi mike
> i use gnome on debian sarge witha g4 titanium powerbook (1ghz 
> processor) and just installed alsa: alsa base and alsa mixer.
> i can now use alsa with pd (a sound application) but i cannot seem to 
> use alsa with anything else (cd players, etc).
> furthermore, with an initial install of sarge (before installing alsa) 
> i had no sound at all. i could not figure out how to get this working.
> i've also installed jack. i can start the jack server, but when i try 
> to use other applications, such as ardour, i get the message that jack 
> is already being used by another application.
> has anyone else encountered these problems and found a solution?
> thanks very much.
> best regards
> jason kahn
>
> > This is an opinion question, I am wondering who on this list uses 
> > Gnome and who uses KDE, I like the simplistic look of gnome, which is 
> > why I switched to gnome, but however one thing that is really 
> > important to me is sound.
> >
> > Googling it, I have found very little literature on that subject, and 
> > the only output I have been able to produce sound with is esd.  ALSA 
> > and OSS sinks both give me 'unable to construct test pipe' and artsd 
> > runs the test with no audio, sound in mol is broken now, with a 
> > report of "OSS sound device unavailable (will be used anyway)
> > OSS sound driver"
> >
> > So I do not know whether MOL cannot use OSS, and/or whether esd just 
> > takes total control of /dev/dsp, which I have read a little bit about.
> >
> > This is making me want to switch back to KDE, but I must ask, is ALSA 
> > possible in gnome?
OK, I don't know if this will work for you, but I managed to get OSS 
working in gnome by renaming esd, so that nothing would start the 
daemon, and switching Multimedia Sound Selector to OSS.  For me that 
takes care of RhythmBox, a program in GNOME that uses gstreamer, and 
also MOL which now uses ALSA.  In the Default GNOME install I think 
something starts up ESD which is why nothing else can use the audio device.

Although giving a second reading to your message this soudns less and 
less like the symptoms of what I was having.  My first question to you 
is does the user you are using have write priveledges to the audio 
device?  (mine does though the audio group)  Also I am not using Sarge, 
I am using SID, and I think the gnome I used with Sarge was 2.8, and the 
one I am using in 2.10.1 which a friend of mine, who worked on gnome for 
a while, recommended to me, and in reading about it, 2.10.1 is supposed 
to fix quite a few bugs in 2.10.  Ofcourse whether the Debian packages 
are very much altered I do not know, I also do have the experimental 
tree active in my sources.list and also 
http://pkg-gnome.alioth.debian.org/debian experimental main which I 
found on the web for GNOME 2.10 pending packages, which I also may have 
some of, IDK

Good Luck,
--Mike S