[PLUG] This is seriously good

[Atul Sowani]

Dear Onkar,

I don't know how old my audio card is and I never ever said that the
card was old or new.
I did some reseach indeed and finally made it work partially. I can
play audio CDs using the very same card on Linux. Only problem is that
xine does not play sound while playing a movie and audacity does not
record anything (hence I can't convert my audio tapes to CDs). That is
the problem.

For your kind information, I've already done my "research" on alsa and
audacity websites as well as on other Linux mailing list. I tried to
get help at linuxquestions.org as well. But at the end of my research
(read as "patience") I found out that this particular problem is faced
by many users and nobody has yet reached the solution. So at the
moment, the only quarters from which the help can be expected are
audacity developers or alsa developers.

But leave this aside - I was not complaining about audacity not
exploiting my audio card's features. In fact this drives home my point
- installing/configuring a new hardware is difficult on linux. That's
what my complaint was. We were talking about "Linux as popular OS"
right? So you can't make assumption that each and every user who is
stuck on some hardware issue should go and do a "research" and "try to
figure out" things himself. I think that is the very reason that's
forcing masses from keeping distance from Linux.

Best regards,
Atul.

On 7/27/06, Onkar Shinde <onkarshinde at rediffmail.com> wrote:
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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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