Linux sound is a steaming pile

by illumen on 9/23/2009, 10:52 PM with 15 comments
  • by ars on 9/23/2009, 11:53 PM

    Linux sound is broken IMO till it travels seamlessly over remote connections, just like a mouse and a screen do.

    X handles Mouse and Keyboard and Screen I/O, and there is no reason sound should not be considered a basic I/O that should go too.

    Just add another

      Section "InputDevice"
    or xorg.conf, and OutputDevice as well. Each Xserver will list the specs it can handle (frequency/bitrate/channels), and clients will either adjust themself to the capabilities of the server, or pick some master format and convert on the fly as needed.

  • by RyanMcGreal on 9/24/2009, 2:42 AM

    Sound has been my one big disappointment since moving to Linux. I cannot believe how broken it is - a hodge-podge of half-built mini tools that don't play nice together and don't add up to anything close to a decent audio environment.

    I installed Rosegarden on Ubuntu 9.04 with high hopes, but after hours of monkeying around with it, it flat-out will not play music. Likewise, I installed timidity and what I had read was a kick-ass soundfont, only to discover that about a third of the instruments are simply missing.

    Arrgh!

  • by icey on 9/23/2009, 10:55 PM

    I don't understand the "(not worth reading)" at the end of your headline.