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Ubuntu - Sound problems for many people
Mon, 12/22/2008 - 11:44 — mormandy1
Well, every few years I take the plunge. Suse, Redhat, now Ubuntu. I want SOOO bad to ditch windows, to have an alternative. We all know the pain involved with window, and the ridiculous price tag you pay for it.
And once again, I will be reformatting my hard drive, and erasing yet another failed attempt at linux. Why? Well, how about having sound out of only one channel. Yeah, I checked all the obvious things, and it works fine in windows, it isn't a wiring or hardware issue. It's a LINUX ISSUE. After an hour of google research, I can see I am far from alone. Many, many people have the same problem. Some find weird, quirky solutions, most never find a solution. And this happens with many different sound devices, onboard, sound cards, everything. And there is not ONE solid solution available. Some people have sound cards that work, and some don't. I am in the don't category, and I am sure as hell not going out to spend money on a sound card hoping it might satisfy ubuntu.
The people involved in developing linux just never quite put enough time into testing and problem solving. Problems in simple areas like this pop up, and never get resolved. This has been a known issue for a long time, yet no fix.
I am probably done with linux forever now, just sick of the wasted time. Three strikes and linux is out of my life.
Fortunately for me, I discovered Macs some time ago, and love my macbook to death. It is awesome in every way and blows windows and pcs out of the water. Problem is it was expensive, and I can no longer afford to buy another mac. I have a cheap pc lying around, and need an os that works on it. Back to windows.
Never could get sound to
Never could get sound to work in Doom 3 under Ubuntu. Nobody had any solutions either. Foaming-at-the-mouth fanboys will never understand that we just want our programs to work.
Incidentally, I was at my
Incidentally, I was at my parents' house yesterday, and my sister told me that sound did not work for her under Linux (Ubuntu 8.10, SoundBlaster Live). I always set-up dual-boot on every PC I administer, but usually do not expect anyone but me to use that funny "other OS". So I was a little surprised, both that she had tried it, and liked it enough that she wanted me to fix it.
When she told me, I was a little stumped. After all, I use the PC regularly and I had no sound issues. So I checked whether she was a member of the audio group. She was. It took me over an hour to figure out what was causing the problems. Finally, it turned out that the problem was an outdated .asoundrc from hardy (or even as old as feisty?). Apparently, these do not get auto-generated at dist-upgrade.
So for all of you debugging ALSA problems:
drop to terminal (yay for CLI!)
cat /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Noise.wav > /dev/dsp; tests OSS outputcat /proc/asound/pcm; lists all card instances recognized by the ALSA kernel driveraplay -L; lists all configured outputs for ALSA. There should at least be a front: or stereo: output.asoundconf list; lists all cards supported by alsa (which may be less than pcm indicates because some cards have multiple PCM devices)rm ~/.asoundrc*; removes any stale per-user configuration (backup if necessary!)asoundconf set-default-card XXX; regenerates the user config with card XXX as defaultasoundconf set-pulseaudio; for all pulseaudio fans...and surprise surprise
...and surprise surprise that doesn't work either... I have no sound in flash in ubuntu 9.04, tried a dozen different «ways to fix it», been at it for a week with no results and then i just stoped and thought: if I have to boot in windows everytime I want to play a game or watch a youtube video with sound why am I booting in ubuntu?? the hard truth that ubuntu fanboys dont face is that the image they sell of ubuntu vs windows is upside down. Windows is not that graphically appealing but things WORK. simple things like flash sound work, drivers work... Ubuntu looks great in visual terms but good luck trying to install drivers for yourself and everytime you have a problem like the one I mentioned above you go on forums and find dozens of possible solutions with no guaranties that at least one will work for you and that's not my definition of a stable OS. who the hell cares how cool it looks to install things using comand lines if afterwards they dont work properly?? fanatics need to understand that the fact that linux is more complex doesn't make it more advanced. I'm a pragmatist, for me the better one is the one that FUNCTIONS better, and you know what? in an afternoon you can get xp runing with all the stuff you will ever need ready to be used, with linux 2 or 3 days later you will probably still be strolling forums looking for that solution that many times just doesnt exist... this is sad but true, time to face facts. And to be honest a lot of stuff in linux is way more complex than it would ever have to be... it's like their main concern is to make it look cool for programers...but 99,99999999% of computer users are not.. so they either decide to make an easy and stable OS that can compete with XP or they remain on their current course... an over the top OS designed by and for the people who make it.
... and that's the point
... and that's the point where I like my Install.exe no matter how technically superior you may consider yourself after bashing those commands into the console.
I cannot believe how people
I cannot believe how people are reacting here in this forum.
User A: I have a problem with sound
User B: I has this problem too. Here how I found out what the problem is: [some command with explanations]
User C: YOU ARROGANT BASTARD? HOW AM I SUPPOSE TO KNOW THIS!!!
OK, I exagerate a bit. But I think some people here have a "behavioural" problem.
However, I agree with the general point that audio under Linux is in a very bad shape. I think that distributions switched too early to Pulse Audio without testing if it works with flash and Skype (or ignoring the negative test results).
The problem is a lot of the
The problem is a lot of the stuff is very hard to figure out on your own without intimate knowledge of many subsystems. For instance, the documentation that came with the PAM authentication modules was just completely insufficient and didn't allow me to forumulate or figure out my own solution to a particular problem I was having.
The software should give the user enough information to deduce for themselves what route of enquiry to take, or where to look. It should not require 'prior knowledge' that wouldn't normally be assumed, ie, stuff developers know because they wrote it.
Exactly! How the heck is
Exactly! How the heck is any user supposed to figure that out on their own? They cant! And let me guess, if your distro is different, this wont work because the files are in different places?
This definately is NOT user friendly. User friendly would be having one config app, which allows for manual override which controls all necessary config files.