"Linux works. This is a very matter-of-fact statement, but it is one many people (myself included) make every day when they boot up their computers. It is not a perfect product, it would not be sensible to expect something as complex as an operating system to be flawless, but fact remains that Linux does work. On the software side of things the open source community has done a very good job of making this clear, but the other half of computing, hardware, this movement has not been as successful. Every day Linux users encounter driver and compatibility issues which Windows users have not had to deal with for years."
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Member since:2005-10-08
"ALSA is a sound architecture, it provides driver-level support for sound devices. It actually makes sense to develop and release the userland sound mixer as a separate entity. Both major DE's come with mixing solutions,"
Sure. Which introduces another problem. The two sound mixers included with the two major DEs, are not compatible with each other! That's right, they aren't! And guess what that means? Some programs only work under one or the other.
"Dude, you're describing a problem that existed for a few versions of the Linux kernel more than a year and a half ago. I remember using the patch you speak of,"
The problem still exists. I am running the latest version of the kernel (2.6.14), and no, it has not been fixed.
Edited 2005-12-17 17:34
Member since:
2005-07-08
"Well, until you want to play two sound sources at the same time--something Windows handles with ease, but ALSA can't seem to do at all unless you are running an external sound daemon that you can send it all through."
ALSA is a sound architecture, it provides driver-level support for sound devices. It actually makes sense to develop and release the userland sound mixer as a separate entity. Both major DE's come with mixing solutions, and with technologies like GStreamer becoming more mature (and championed by both major DE's), the state of Linux Desktop sound is strong.
"Not exactly. They don't have support for the Intel 855 chipset, which is a very common embedded chipset in laptops. Intel does produce 855 drivers, but they don't provide binaries, and you have to build them from source. Which last time I did it I found to be a hassle (needs very up to date kernel sources and such).
and even once you have the Intel 855 driver installed, you won't get widescreen 1280x800 support because of a bug in the Linux driver from Intel. So then you need install a third party patch which you have to load at each system boot."
Dude, you're describing a problem that existed for a few versions of the Linux kernel more than a year and a half ago. I remember using the patch you speak of, which basically fixed the way the kernel reported the shared memory address ranges to XFree86 (yes, Xorg didn't really exist back then). I can't remember exactly when this was fixed, but I'd like to say ~2.6.5 or so. Centrino laptops were in their first generation, 1.3-1.5GHz.