[PLUG] This is seriously good

[Onkar Shinde]

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Atul Sowani wrote:
> Just to give an example, I installed a sound card in my PC which has
> Win2000 and slackware linux 9.1/10.1 on it. When I installed the card
> and restarted my machine, windows detected the card and could take
> full advantage of it. On the other hand, when I booted my machine in
> linux, I found that there is a very limited support on linux for this
> card. Moreover, xine and audacity stopped playing/recording sound
> since they couldn't find the audio device. So this means that I have
> to re-configure lot of files and enable/disable daemons (esd etc).
> Considering I am a _very ordinary_ user, I will not be able to fix
> this problem myself. So I have to search internet resources, ask LUGs
> and do some research on my part - this definitely is frustrating.

Tell me frankly. Do you really think that sound card which is supported out of box (assuming you
didn't install any extra drivers) on Windows version that is 6 years old wouldn't be supported on a
linux distro that is just 2 years old?

The fact that you know words like 're-configure', 'daemons', 'esd' invalidates your claim of being
'very ordinary user'.
So come out of hiding and try to do more research. Honestly I don't know why people feel frustrated
to do research and to learn.

I will give you 3 steps.
1. Start terminal and do 'lspci | grep -i audio'
2. Go to http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/ and see if your card is supported. I am sure it must
be. This is just for your satisfaction.
3. Run 'alsamixer' and unmute the card.

> So, instead of claiming that linux supports widest range of hardware,
> what it should try to do is how to simplify the
> installation/detection/functioning with the latest hardware. If this
> is achieved I am sure linux will be one of the most popular OS with
> largest user base.

Hardware installation/detection/functioning will be good when there is driver available for it.
This can not be one way. You can not expect kernel developers (who work 'mostly' in their free time)
to write driver for every piece of hardware as soon as it comes to market when h/w vendors even
don't show interest in opening specifications.




Onkar
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