“It happens to everyone eventually. You walk into the office, turn on the desktop PC and you’re greeted with ugly beeping and no video. The slightly acrid tang of electrical smoke reaches your nostrils and you know that before you’ve even begun your day, it’s already over. You say a small prayer to the computing gods that it’s not the hard drive that’s fried and you turn everything off before you begin unplugging peripherals.” Read the rest of the article at LinuxOrbit.
Death, Re-birth & Silence: Troubleshooting Sound Cards under Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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my linux gave out a bit of static while playing my mp3, I had to install open sound and crack it to get rid of the noise, and that was SoundBlaster pci 128!
Sound configuration has become much easier over the years as GNU/Linux distributions have matured.
Yes it definitely has! All this guy had to do was download the sound module, configure it, make, make install, configure modules.conf, and twiddle with the the mixer (which is different for each distro).
Hm…. that’s exactly what I had to do 6 years ago when I first gave Linux a try.
There really is no excuse for things to be this complicated. NOBODY should have to go through such hoops to get sound working under any OS. The excuse that ‘Linux isn’t for the average desktop user’ doesn’t cut it. It may as well be said that ‘Linux is only for people who have nothing better to do with their time than bit-fiddle to try and get basic computer I/O working.’
Audio drivers, SCSI drivers, desktop, server, embedded,… it’s all the same problem. Configuration under Linux is baroque (broke, too!) and that’s pitiful.
Argh, I’ve lived 4months now without sound, when i saw this article i was hoping it could help me but alas it just said what _everyone_ else said. “Install the kernel drivers, check the mixers, maybe try ALSA”. Never have i had problems getting sound going except for with this new computer.
Its a DEC Alpha 500Mhz, with an EISA bus, and a PCI bus. I bought a SBLive! card, installed it, kernel drivers found it, everything seemed ok, but no sound came out of the card. Yes i checked the mixers, they were at max. So i traded the card for a SCSI burner thinking i got the better end of that deal. I then tried my ISA AWE64 with the EISA slot. Same problem, it detects, but no sound. I borrowed another PCI card, some no name one, installed it, couldnt get the kernel drivers going for it, so i downloaded ALSA. With abit of help from someone i was able to get the card to work. But the volume was so low that it wasnt worth it. I figured i could get ALSA going for my AWE64 so i gave the card back. I tried configuring ALSA for my AWE64 but it just doesnt work, it complains about errors that people have never heard of.
If someone, ANYONE, would be able to give me a hand with this problem i’d appreciate it, email me. I miss MP3s, you can only listen to RedBook audio for so long.
compile in kernel support for AWE64 (there is in 2.4.x).
make sure your user is in the audio group in /etc/group, check the mixer… make sure you use OSS for audio output in ie xmms
sad
I did some research for you, this is what I found:
<BR>
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=sblive+alpha+linux&hl=en&selm=m3y… 2″ rel=”nofollow”>http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/241/2001/12/0/7369259/”>2&l… , http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/241/2001/12/0/7371108/“>3&l… 4″ rel=”nofollow”>http://www.geocrawler.com/lists/3/Debian-Linux/241/25/7359425/”>… . (hey, don’t tell me you are the one who wrote 2 of these messages I link
<BR>
It seems that the ALSA driver does not work, but if you use some Debian patches and the Creative source for SBLive, you should have sound.
lol, this second link you provided was Raptor-32’s post to the mailing list
“compile in kernel support for AWE64 (there is in 2.4.x).
make sure your user is in the audio group in /etc/group, check the mixer… make sure you use OSS for audio output in ie xmms”
And some people think Linux is ready for the desktop and Joe Consumer – LMAO!
Well… this isn’t actually what you should have to do normally – just when it won’t work. It’s not like it use to be very simple to resolve hardware problems in Windows either – rather the opposite.
Btw – all the cards Raptor-32 mentions are auto-detected by SuSE/RH/Mandrake and they all have native support in kernel (I use a SB Live! myself, with the built-in kernel driver)
is this auto-detection by SuSE/RH/Mandrake also applicable to an Alpha based machine? I haven’t seem many ISO for alpha..
Thanks Eugenia, but reading my own posts doesnt help me much.
I’ll check to see if Creative offers drivers for the AWE64 seeing how i no longer have that SBLive! (burner was a 4x and it crashes the kernel after every burn. 
).
And for the people that think that this makes Linux unusable: Debian Potato’s 2.2 kernel autodetected it, and it was working. But I wanted XF4 and the ATI Radeon driver so i needed to upgrade to 2.4.x. Now because of a problem (either with binutils or the kernel itself (i get told different things by different people)) i can only compile 2.4.17. All other kernels dont compile properly, so i cant even test them.
If you want linux to take advantage of your hardware you should compile stuff yourself.
Well… this isn’t actually what you should have to do normally – just when it won’t work. It’s not like it use to be very simple to resolve hardware problems in Windows either – rather the opposite.
In Windows, when hardware is unsupported, you go to the System control panel and via a fairly intelligently laid-out interface, you go ot “Unknown Hardware” (or whatever it’s called) and from there can install drivers and whatnot (not to mention that newer versions of Windows will utilize Windows Update to look for updated drivers for you). If you’re going to pretend that that’s on the same level as compiling a kernel, you’re either dishonest with yourself or are very far removed from reality and what most computer users are capable of.
If you want linux to take advantage of your hardware you should compile stuff yourself.
This statement speaks more about how ready for the desktop Linux isn’t than pretty much anything else I’ve read here today.
Linux will NEVER be ready for the desktop. Joe Average needs to use Windows or (I hope so, anyway) OpenBEOS when it’s mature.
Cant _ONE_ of these comments sections not involve linux vs windows fights?
Windows uses a microkernel so its easier for them to do that type of stuff. And know what? Windows wont start taking advantage of the new stuff your processor has, why? Cause its compiled for the lowest common denominator, which im guessing is probably Pentiums now days. So, if you dont have anything intelligent to say about what the topic of this article is, please leave Linux alone. Its the OS i choose to run, and your pathetic attempts at putting it down wont work.
Where can you find information on the windows kernel?
http://www.microsoft.com/
they have some pretty informative sections if you are ready to dig.
If you want linux to take advantage of your hardware you should compile stuff yourself.
No not really. A kernel shipped by a distro *should* contain a complete set of modules. Except for my windows printer i have had all my hardware auto-detected and working for a long time now, and now even my printer works. It wasn’t before Windows XP that the same was true in windows. So unless you need support for something the kernel doesnt support without patches i dont really see any reason of why you *have* to compile your own kernel. That you might do it anyway is another thing.
As what have been said by previous user, dont use this forum to bash Linux. For me (and many of other Linux users) I knew already many thing Windows can do that Linux can’t do. However I use Linux because I love it although it sometime need a little extra work. It doesn’t matter whether Linux is ready for desktop or not, those who want to use Winsow$ just use it, I will keep on using Linux until I hate it. Window$ user doesn’t have to bash Linux if they love Window$ because Linux will never dried your pocket for whatever reason.
I mean really, It boots in 20 seconds which includes determining what hardware you have and loading drivers for it.
This is the year 2002, why is it that this technology is being allowed to die!!!!
I mean really, It boots in 20 seconds which includes determining what hardware you have and loading drivers for it.
This is the year 2002, why is it that this technology is being allowed to die!!!!
I believe you could do this with linux too if you only load the really needed things and if you tweak the boot scripts to load things in paralel, so i dont really find this a big deal. However, there are many other things in BeOS that i find interesting and dont like to see die. One is the way it makes single threaded programs benefit from SMP, one is its filesystem, and there are other things i can remember off-hand. So i basically agree with you, but i don’t think the startup time is the most important thing in be.
>I believe you could do this with linux too if you only load the really needed things and if you tweak the boot scripts to load things in paralel, so i dont really find this a big deal.
It’s not the boot time. It’s the way BeOS configures itself and detects the hardware in the boot process. Add/remove hardware and BeOS will find it/configure it and then use it and it is so quick.
I mean call me crazy but I spent last weekend installing different OS’s. I installed BeOS Dano, Windows 2000 and OpenBSD.
10 minutes to get Dano up and running. Rock solid all week.
1 hour to install windows 2000 and 4 hours to get it all working. Sunday afternoon it crapped itself and now bluescreens on boot, can’t safe boot, can’t repair. Complete reinstall required.
40 minutes for OpenBSD but that included the scary moments of trying to figure out what the HELL it was talking about when preparing the partition. I’ve got a degree in computer science and I still wasn’t sure if I was about to screw my partition map when I did it. It works but I haven’t fully configured all the bits.
Why is it so damned hard people.
Cheers
David
It’s not the boot time. It’s the way BeOS configures itself and detects the hardware in the boot process. Add/remove hardware and BeOS will find it/configure it and then use it and it is so quick.
Ok, im no BeOS user, i have only read about it (i have no intentions of buying another non-free operating system. (free speech, not beers, i dont mind paying) anyway, this is OT) But this sounds all fine and dandy, but instantly makes me worry about the cases where this doesn’t work or if it detects your hardware wrongly and ends up locking up your machine. But if both of those are no problem then it is cool.
But i mainly think this is a political decision. With the auto configuration that the linux distros have during installation they shouldnt have too much trouble to do this during boot as well, and they are kind of doing it. At least redhat and mandrake does this (by running a program called kudzu) but it will prompt you before changing your config and i dont know if it checks everything*. But it is a start)
[SNIP] I installed BeOS Dano, Windows 2000 and OpenBSD.
10 minutes to get Dano up and running. Rock solid all week.
1 hour to install windows 2000 and 4 hours to get it all working. [SNIP] 40 minutes for OpenBSD [SNIP]
Is this user time or system time? If user time then this doesn’t sound like my experience, which is around 10 mins for both linux and windows. If you are talking system time, well, depends on install size more than anything else. As for your problems with OpenBSD, well, it is supposed to be a minimalistic server os, this generally makes things hard to setup, but in most cases it doesnt matter as it is the result that really matters for critical servers.
Why is it so damned hard people.
I don’t think it really is that hard. Sure it could be better, but be sure to go with systems that are meant to be workstation systems if you want this to be easy. Is Linux a workstation os? yes, but some areas needs work. Hardware support will never be perfect as long as the manufacturers keep hiding the specs. But if your hardware is supported then i find Linux as easy as anything else to setup**.
*) I don’t really know anything about kudzu except for how it seems to work on a redhat and mandrake box seen from a users point of view.
**) This varies from distro to distro. As an example, Debian could be easier to setup for sure.
My sound card isn’t supported under BeOS, but with one click of a pkg file its all said and done.
Linux (X actually) freaks up alot on my dual display video as well. And lets talk about TV cards. Linux users go thru all kinds of hoops to get standard TV card working under X. I use the term “working” loosely. Its not like BeOS or Windows, the display looks like crap, the available front ends aren’t ANYWHERE as good as the BeOS or Windows TV apps when it comes to features or ease of use. And just try to drag or resize your output window!! NASTY.
And the Linux crowd is wet pants over some half hacked preemtive kernel patch getting accepted so they can play an mp3 and cruise the web all at the same time!!! Assuming they can make their sound card work. GO LINUX!!!
I’m a sucker though, I keep installing new distros thinking that one day it’ll be worth the effort but every time I get dissapointed. Guess I should have never used BeOS, now my standards are just to high 😉
>Ok, im no BeOS user, i have only read about it (i have no intentions of buying another non-free operating system. (free speech, not beers, i dont mind paying) anyway, this is OT) But this sounds all fine and dandy, but instantly makes me worry about the cases where this doesn’t work or if it detects your hardware wrongly and ends up locking up your machine. But if both of those are no problem then it is cool.
Although milage may vary from the various people I talk to that use BeOS it just works. Hardware that is not recognised is not used. This is true for the PCI/ISA etc devices. North bridge/South Bridge type hardware is another story. BeOS will fail to install/boot if it has problems here.
The nice thing about this configuration occuring on boot is that you can change hardware around and reboot. Windows gets upset if you move a card from 1 slot to another.
> Is this user time or system time?
User time and not clocked with a stopwatch.
For BeOS I just created a partition, mounted the ISO image and copied to files to the new partition. Updated my bootmanager to tell it about the new partition and reboot.
Much of the time in the OpenBSD install was me reading and re-reading the help file on the partition label utility with it’s cryptic commands and strangely named partitions. I was sweating bullets when I finally hit the command to write out to disk.
I am not sure how you can do Windows 2000 in 10 minutes. It took nearly that long to run through it’s detect hardware routines plus 2 reboots. After that you apply all the various patches. SP2, AGP patch, all the security patches. I just spent a lot of time running windows updater and having to download some patch.
Certainly if I wanted to setup a server to do something I would choose one of the BSD’s. Once I got OpenBSD installed it ran fine, I just felt that the installation is far too cryptic.
Windows 2000 I was almost ready to say that Microsoft had finally made a useable OS but then it crapped itself.
BeOS is still running strong but is no longer developed. Frankly that sucks.
> I don’t think it really is that hard. Sure it could be better, but be sure to go with systems that are meant to be workstation systems if you want this to be easy. Is Linux a workstation os? yes, but some areas needs work. Hardware support will never be perfect as long as the manufacturers keep hiding the specs. But if your hardware is supported then i find Linux as easy as anything else to setup**.
I have not yet tried one of the more recent Linux Distros. 4 years ago when I was looking for an OS, I installed both Linux (Redhat) and BeOS 4.0. I was so blown away by BeOS that I did very little with the Linux installation. I was drawn to the BSD’s though because I see them as being a little more stable from my lurking on the various BSD discussion groups.
Cheers
David
I am not sure how you can do Windows 2000 in 10 minutes. It took nearly that long to run through it’s detect hardware routines plus 2 reboots. After that you apply all the various patches. SP2, AGP patch, all the security patches. I just spent a lot of time running windows updater and having to download some patch.
I dont sit around and wait while it is working
And don’t forget to apply the patches that fixed the patches! (my favorite) I don’t really like win2k, but i do find it a step forward from nt 4.0, and i do find XP to be better than 2k, just too bad that it have all the political problems. But linux (unix really) is still my first choice.
I have not yet tried one of the more recent Linux Distros. 4 years ago when I was looking for an OS, I installed both Linux (Redhat) and BeOS 4.0.
If you found linux sucky 4 years ago i don’t blame you, but A LOT of things have changed since then. Maybe you should try again one day, who knows, you might like it. But of course if be does everything you want then i dont see a reason to switch unless you are curious.
I’ll just comment on this as I don’t want to get into any
flame wars…
I’ve never had an mp3 skip on me linux, except maybe
once or twice, of course that just happens sometimes.
It’s happened to me in every OS I’ve used (which is more
than most).
I’ve untarred gimp, compiled a kernel, and played an mp3
at the same time, no problems. I think when it’s said
your mp3’s won’t skip with the preemptive patch,
it is meant for when you’re doing
far more than simply searching the web, like doing
some big (un)tars, compiling a bunch of stuff in addition
to the web.
On a side note, FreeBSD 3.* would skip on mp3’s
when doing a kernel compile and OR an untar, with
dual pII 350’s, linux on the same hardware with only
one cpu in the system never had trouble.
Whatever, I really hope OpenBeOS succeeds, the
non-free aspect of Be was my biggest problem with it
(I did pay for 4.5 and 5 pro however).
> I dont sit around and wait while it is working
And don’t forget to apply the patches that fixed the patches! (my favorite) I don’t really like win2k, but i do find it a step forward from nt 4.0, and i do find XP to be better than 2k, just too bad that it have all the political problems. But linux (unix really) is still my first choice.
I generally expect an install to be somewhat time consuming, I guess the issue was that when you do a few OS’s side by side you quickly come to appreciate the simplicity and speed of the BeOS install process. The Initial Win2K install was ok, I just became increasingly annoyed at all the patching I had to do. (I also became annoyed that it didn’t want to allow me to uninstall Outlook Express, it’s my machine why can’t I decide what runs on it???).
For the time I ran Win2K I was happy with it. It was reasonably responsive and generally worked as I expected but then it up and died for no reason.
> If you found linux sucky 4 years ago i don’t blame you, but A LOT of things have changed since then. Maybe you should try again one day, who knows, you might like it. But of course if be does everything you want then i dont see a reason to switch unless you are curious.
I didn’t mean to imply that I found Linux ‘sucky’ because I didn’t. I found it to be pretty much unix which I learned on at university and have used off and on through the years. It is just that I found BeOS to be so nice, it was enough unix like underneath (although it was not a unix clone) and handled everything in a really nice way, from the queryable filesystem down to the add-ons for audio/video/text/pictures etc. I got the impression that the the people at BeInc really sat down and thought a lot about how to make an OS.
Cheers
David
> I just became increasingly annoyed at all the patching I
> had to do.
You can Make Win2K CD’s that install SP automatically. find out how <a href=”http://www.ntcompatible.com/content.php?page_id=15“>here.</a&…
Sigh I bought an Aureal Vortex 2 based sound card in it’s day it was a good buy, but now I can’t get any decent drivers for it. Guess I’ll have to buy a Sound Blaster of some description.
I used to use Linux on my PC, and it burned too. Now I use Windows PX, and everything work ok.
Ungolaint wrote:
Sigh I bought an Aureal Vortex 2 based sound card in it’s day it was a good buy, but now I can’t get any decent drivers for it. Guess I’ll have to buy a Sound Blaster of some description.
Not necessarily. The Turtle Beach folks are back, and their http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/santacruz/“>Santa soundcard has received good reviews. One of the nicest things about it is that it seems to not have the IRQ sharing problems the Live! cards are (in)famous for…