Re: Re: No GNOME system sounds in Squeeze
On Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:54:51 -0500 (EST), Jasper wrote:
> FYI, this is a copy of the "README" that comes with Esound in Etch, it's
> date on my computer is june 2005 :
>
> Esound is an audio mixing server that allows multiple
> applications to output sound to the same audio device.
> Development on Esound stopped several years ago, in the
> hope that someone would write a replacement. Esound is
> seriously lacking in features required for a modern
> desktop environment, particularly for multi-channel
> audio and audio/video synchronization. However, it is
> part of the GNOME platform (for a little while longer),
> so we slavishly continue to maintain it.
>
> Bugs should be reported at http://bugzilla.gnome.org.
> It's unlikely that they'll be fixed unless they're
> regressions from recent versions or accompanied by
> patches.
>
> Something should change, but ....
Yes, I remember seeing something like that on my Lenny system,
which also uses the ESD. Under Lenny, The ESD starts when GNOME
starts, and the ESD terminates when GNOME terminates;
so now that I think about it
I shouldn't be surprised that there is no startup script for
it in /etc/init.d/. But the fact that, under Squeeze, the ESD
no longer starts when GNOME starts, even though the esound
package is installed, leads me to believe that something *is*
finally changing. From the circumstantial evidence, it appears
that GNOME is now relying on sound mixing in ALSA (hardware or
software, depending on the capabilities of the audio chipset)
rather than a network-transparent audio daemon to mix sounds
from multiple applications. That is a major transition, and
bugs are likely. The suppression of startup and shutdown sounds
is apparently a circumvention for a bug.
The other possibility is that GNOME has switched to a different
network transparent audio daemon, such as pulseaudio. And
since I don't have pulseaudio installed, I'm not getting
startup and shutdown sounds. But that appears unlikely. Why
would they handle some system sounds (startup and shutdown)
through an audio server, while sending other system sounds,
such as alert, directly to ALSA?
At this point, I'm assuming that the lack of startup and
shutdown sounds is a known bug which will eventually be fixed.
If someone more knowledgeable out there wishes to correct me,
I'm all ears.
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