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?
Please correct me if I am wrong, but in my searching I have concluded 
that sound will not work in anything in gnome, unless you have the 
proper device set in Desktop > Preferences > Multimedia Systems 
Selector, which I gather sets the audio mode for all things inside gnome 
that use gstreamer (Which is all, I think).  As I said before ESD is the 
only output that I can get to work.  Still looking, but what I have read 
so far says that ESD causes a hell of a processor load, though I have 
not noticed anything, but I don't tinker with commands that high level, 
I have also read that esd is pretty good in that it can take multiple 
programs and send all things to the card, which is what I want, because 
I ran kde and could only have one application use sound at a time.

Another thing I am trying to find is a way to get esd to share the sound 
card.  I read a while back that it was possible for you to set the 
daemon so that it would "share" the given audio device, and I am 
thinking that that would (maybe) help in things like mol and such that 
need OSS or alsa.

Hope this helps
--Mike S