“New Linux distros still fail a task that Windows 95 — yes, 95! — easily handles, namely working with mainstream sound cards. That sends the cost of commercial, paid versions of Linux dramatically higher”, says Fred Langa for InformationWeek.Our Take: I have quite a number of PCs over here and all sound cards work with Linux. There are some problems some times of course, for example this one and this one, but overall, they manage to work. The real problem is in the compatibility between architectures that needs to get configured correctly, namely applications needing ALSA or OSS (which its configuration on modprobe.conf/modules.conf can not be recreated by hand by “normal” users, it is not a simple matter), ARts or ESD, and GStreamer’s schizophrenic sink-whatever stuff that no one really gets (I currently can’t get Gstreamer 0.8.x applications to work correctly on Arch Linux for example for no apparent reason, while it works on Slackware and Fedora2-test2).
Editorial: Linux’s Achilles’ Heel
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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… to his cottage outside of redmond, because he has not had a good link to reality for as long as I have known about him. I have always regarded fred as a dopey, not-knowin’, not-very-perceptive, quasi-technical person, the type for whom windows was created. He really is not quite qualified to write about OSes.
Sometimes I look at his column when somebody mentions it to me, and I used to read it a little back when I still used windows, and I just had to shake my head at the little inaccuracies at his perception of the way the industry was/is, or some little technical point, or the way he explains them. I don’t think I ever used anything from his column, not something that I had already gotten from somewhere elese already.
As for the technical aspects of this article, he did go through some moronic machinations to be able to say he failed at what he was trying to do. I think he was using VirtualPC to “try the distros’ sound detection,” and probably did not mention it to Xandros tech support. And how in the hell did he hose his X config??
Also, win95 with 99% probability cannot support his onboard sound, as the hardware was not around when 95 came out, and that is not even mentioning the cpu speed/timing loop patch you had to install on 95 to get it to work on fast cpus… Ever had to underclock your machine to install an OS? (K62-500 or K6III-400 and win95 for me… then I wondered why Quake2 was running just a little bit slow after I installed… oh, yeah, I forgot to reset the motherboard jumper and it’s only running at 250mHz!!)
I could whine and complain about windows not being able to run in fullscreen mode in BOCHS or QEMU or whatever, and not tell you about emulator part of the test, and it would be very much like this article. Some ppl are so dopey….
Being a linux user, I have to admit that hardware support for many distros can be a bit frustrating for the uninitiated. It’s especially worse when even paying money ($80-90) for a more “windows user-friendly” distro to ease the pain. Kinda sucked when I dropped $100+ on a distro when I was a linux noob and couldn’t even get the same basic functionality as windows (i.e. hardcore gaming, hardware RAID to name a few). It kinda broke my heart =(. The point is, a linux noob or wanna-be convert should download and test a live CD and hit the FAQs and forums for questions and clues before even THINKING about going out on the limb and dropping $90 or whatever on a distro they know nothing about.
He was using the emulator after the inital failure of several distributions failing to recognize his sound card. Had read the article, you would know he was using the virtual PC software to simulate a “generic” soundblaster card via his on-board sound, in essence, making it seem as if he had decade old hardware running on his box to “make sure” it was a hardware failure, as opposed to software failure. Virtual PC allows for these sorts of compatability tests. It is not unusual to see people “experimenting” with Virtual PC software emulating hardware they do not own to see if it is compatiable with an alternative operating system. Not all of us are made of money.
“Also, win95 with 99% probability cannot support his onboard sound, as the hardware was not around when 95 came out…”
What about Win95–nine-year-old software? No problem at all: A vanilla install of Win95 ran the system perfectly, and with full sound support; with no separate drivers, tweaks, or manual adjustments needed.
Must’ve been magic.
Though it’s true some hardware may not work well with Linux, the problem is more often than not the hardware vendors who produce hardware specifically destined for Windows and other OSes. The same producers also decline to release specifications and details of their hardware to enable the development of drivers. Good news is that some vendors have seen the light and are following what to me is noting but common-sense!
“And let me mention in passing, for now, that normal retail versions of XP (not tweaked OEM versions, but off-the-shelf retail CDs) had no problems at all with the sound system. With XP (Pro and Home), everything on the PC worked right away, with no special drivers or manual intervention required.”
let me metion too, i have 2 pc with onboard sound card,video card , every time i install XP it can’t recognize my sound and video card.. yet i got after i got the driver it forced me at least reboot the system 2 times..
but just worked fine and from the 1st time with various Linux distros, Redhat9,Manderak9,SuSe
“Oddly, I got that to work–but only until I rebooted. Then the sound went away again, and nothing I could do (including reinstalling ALSA) would get it to work. But the fact that the sound briefly worked told me this was a software issue, and not a problem with the sound card per se.
I reinstalled the whole operating system, from scratch, four times! I poked. I prodded. I tweaked. I FAQed. I How-To-ed. I searched Usenet. Nothing solved the problem. ”
i don’t know where did you search …
if Linux doesn’t have a solution you have the wrong problem
I’m rather surprised how immaturely most of you guys immediatly started throwing insults at this person, who actually has a damn good point which I agree with. I love linux, but it has a HUGE disadvantage.
First I had trouble with my own computer. My nforce2 onboard ‘net card was causing the system to slow down like heck everytime internet was used. This was unbearable, and all the people I asked told me to buy a new card. It cost only 20 euros, and now everything works fine for me.
However, I installed linux on my friends computer, who is not yet a really huge fan of linux. Well I installed the good old Slack on his computer, and everything seemed to work fine. He has an intel mobo. However, his sound didn’t work at all. I’ve been using linux for quite a while already, and I am quite positive that it just don’t work. Well, I adviced him to buy a new sound card, and now his thinking about it.
I think hardware is a bigger problem with linux to scare people away from it, rather than games.
Someone said earlier that if you have an ATI cards things are going to be easy. Well, when I tried installing linux for the first time, I chose Mandrake. Well, the graphical installer couldn’t handle me, it simply didn’t want to boot to X. Ofcourse I didn’t realize back then that I could’ve just got ATI’s drivers with lynx or something like that, but that didn’t really work. I also tried this “Cobind” product, which was nice enough to simply hang-up completely upon entering the login screen, never even giving me the option for debug
. However, I’m completely fine atm, but it’s kinda hard explaining how linux rocks to your friend, when his soundcard doesn’t work at all.
I had a similar sound card experience to the author a little while ago. I bought a Dell with a standard setup. It had a standard run of the mill Intel AC97 (or something like iirc) onboard sound card. I installed RH8 and could not get the card to work. I tried various FAQs, HOW-TOs, posting questions to the newsgroups, etc…wasted a lot of time. I figured I’ll try some other distro, none worked with the sound card.
To me a system with no sound is a throwback to pre-Windows 3.1 days and I can’t accept it. I just let RH8 sit on the partition for a year or so without ever using it. Eventually, RH9 came out and the sound magically worked.
More recently, I had to move the PC into a room that did not have a network connection, so I popped in a wireless 802.11b card. Again, I encountered the same problem. The card was a popular one DLink DWL-520. There were no drivers – the drivers from the two community projects were a pile of junk. They either didn’t work or were too complicated to setup. I eventually just gave up.
Bottom line, Linux is just too much hassle for a person like myself who installs and removes new gadgets all the time.
And don’t get me started on USB devices.
I bought a TV card with FM receiver. In the web page of the hardware store I was read: this modell use bt878 chipset. It is supported under linux, all good. But when I tired to use it I see: it is a conexant chipset. It is only partially supported under linux (and not too useable under windows also). The hardware manufacturerer changed the cipset in the product, but the product name doesn’t changed only the product number).
I read the article. I agree that sound didn’t work for him for some stupid reason. However, I think it is time we stop making excuses. Things like sound need to just work.
Personally, I’ve installed almost every unixlike distro out there including the *BSD’s. After all these years, I find that I would like to use my brain energy on things other than getting audio working. Figuring out how to configure sound was fun when I was installing Slackware for the first time over a decade ago, but now it is not such fun and in fact seems like a collosal waste of time. He’s right to bitch. And quite frankly, we should all have higher standards these days.
Fortunately, I think the right people do have the higher standards and things like sound won’t be an issue in the near future. But that doesn’t take away from my point that the excuses need to end here and now. ESR is right about the software issues that he bitches about. This guy is right about configuring sound. And you folks who think we should still have to manually configure sound currently have too low standards. Raise them!
Instead of jumping down this guys throat, we need to realise a simple fact.
This person had trouble getting Linux to work on his machine.
Regardless of why is irrelevent, we need to understand and address hardware setup/config issues. My guess is that the volume was muted, as ALSA does that by default. He said that it worked, then after a reboot it didn’t. Which means that ALSA did not restore the volume levels. It’s happened to me before, and I sure felt like a dick when I realised that sound wasn’t working because it was muted.
Mandrake 10 set the volume levels somewhat reasonably so that sound worked straight away. Distributions should really have a little animated tour of the desktop just to help people with basic things like this.
The sweet spot for hardware is a Creative Sound Blaster Live or similar sound card, and an NVidia graphics card. Also a motherboard around 1-2 years old works really well. I had trouble with Linux when I first bought my computer, but after a few upgrades, everything was smooth. (Actually VIA submitted kernel patches that made my hard drive controller work at the correct speed, yay).
Everyone is talking about Linux, lets talk about windows
Back in 2001 when XP was released
My friends Sound Card an SB 128 PCI or ES1371, didn’t work with XP, the drivers from http://www.soundblaster.com CRASHED windose… 2-3 BSODs a day =] like a 9x… he actualy took his old sound card don’t remember whtch, and waited till SP1 and some driver updates… MMM… gr8…
K… SB 128PCI isnt so popular… ok SBLive! My Sisters PC BSODed when she was watching movies… thats in RealPlayer. WiMP and others…
Also i find XP’s Sound Quality … low…
also…
When Windoses sound drivers are broken/not working.. windose crashes..
When Linux’ sound drivers are broken/not working..
they just don’t work, |NO sound| no crashes….
Maybe he should have tried knoppix 3.3 live cd. My brand new HP laptop on board sound works right out of the box. In my opinion the sound performance was better than Windows XP.
The article is flawed because…
If the author got sound working in a VPC then sound was working fine in Linux. VPC software sends the stream to the sound API just like any other application would.
Testing the sound card with a VPC was a completely illogical move as that merely emulates a virtual generic card [as mentioned in the article] then sends the signal to the _real_ card. Obviously you don’t get sound unless your real life physical sound card is working.
I’m not sure what could have been wrong when trying to use sound with the other apps, but it was obviously pretty minor and fixable; not the lack of support for the card as the author implies.
***
In regards to the subject itself [replying here since the forum there is so lame]:
In my experience, the hardware support issues in Linux are lack of support for a feature, such as TV-out on my video card [the video card works well for standard use] and not of the hardware itself.
Actually I find the hardware base in Linux to be much greater than that of Windows, simpily because old hardware works in new Linux, whereas company-Z didn’t bother writing a driver for their 90’s SCSI card to operate in WinXP.
Although it is supported longer, it is usually a longer wait to get it. That’s not good in IT which has a.. 1-2 year product life-cycle..
***
As to the quality of the drivers.. that’s another matter.. for both OS’s.
MS is trying to improve the quality of drivers with its certifcation program. I would dare to say _most_ of the stability criticism MS endure nowdays is the result of buggy drivers from third paries; not MS code.
The Linux approach is to try and influence open specifications. v2.6 poses strict restrictions on closed source driver capabilities.
At the same time it’s relying on its growing popularity to provide drivers in a timely fashion; which it needs to become mainstream. But consider this:
– Although software is becoming more open, hardware is becoming more proprietary.
– Open drivers mean giving away hardware specifications.
– Quality suffers in reverse engineering, putting aside the fact that it means an endless cycle of catchup which can’t compete. This is also becoming restricted by law.
To discourage drivers of any type at this point seems nuts, but closed code at kernel level compromises everything Linux stands for.
So do you sell out or fade out?
Only hardware patents could get Linux out of this dilemma, but who wants to waste resources fighting patents when they can just keep their specs secret?
It is going to be slow, and it is going to be risky.
Isn’t operating system freedom beautiful! “I” get to chose. If I don’t like someone else’s way of installing a soundcard – I can choose another.
BTW. I came by my current well-paying job honest. I knew how to install and manipulate a sound card, bios settings, and drivers in more than just one platform.
Troy
I’ve installed my new distro on a new machine (new for me, it’s a pIII 800 compaq deskpro with 512mo) and everything has been recognized fine even the sound card EXCEPT
the sound was fast, I mean : it was playing at a level of 48000 khz instead 44100..;
I look everywhere, try everything and nothing (except a commoand line option to the snd-i8x0 but the sound was better but not perfect)…
last ressort ?
get the latest alsa tar.ball (without forgeting all the libs , compile it and install it)
and yes it worked….
I’ve been able to know what I was looking for (alsa-project)
i’ve been able to compile and install by myself
but how many people in the REAL world (I mean the ones for whom a pc is a tool not a way of life) would have been to do the same things????
and for first how many regular people know about 44100 khz problem in some ac97 codec ?
to go back for our poor little guy, he couldn’t know that
1° the sound level of alsa are muted by default (why, my god, why ????)
2° the access properties for /dev/snd * are very restrictive by default on debian based distro
he’s right… in the mdk 9.2 (one of the hardware sutff best distro and one of the most user friendly) there’s no option to switch from alsa to oss except in the install program…
I can’t even imagine how is it in the other distro…..
by the way for those with fedora-core and mp3 problem, this ink is great from great : http://www.gurulabs.com/downloads.html
(try the rss screensaver, it will amaze you by the way)
Djamé
I have NEVER had a piece of hardware not work with Linux, in fact, it usually takes me much longer to find drivers for the Windows PC’s I fix, than to find kernel modules for Linux. Maybe I am just a freak, but I was compiling kernel modules the first day I installed Linux (and the first time I had used it). RTFM!!! I swear, if its not clickey clickey clickey, people turn stupid.
In my experience, if you can’t find a Linux driver, either the hardware is REALLY new, or it is crap (or very niche).
“And how many of those platforms are supportred out of the box on a stok kernel? Not nearly all of those. More often than not, many of those architectures’ support is broken, and it take the distributers patches to get things working again.
Compare that to NetBSD, who’s various supported platforms are all working at every release.
Heh. A Linux choirboy.”
Gentlemen down the hall from me has it running on an alpha and he never complained of needing patches.
Heh, a BSD choirboy.
PS- I like BSD, but I sometimes dislike its fans for their zealoutry against gnu systems.
I think, it’s fine to write an article based on your experiences with an operating system. (that’s what this site is for) My only issue is that you give it a fair chance and don’t make sweeping generalizations. This author seems to have made the assumption that all hardware support in Linux sucks, and he made this conclusion based on one sound card not working. (although he probably just needed to unmute the mixer controls to get it working) If he had trouble getting the rest of his hardware to work, then I would understand. If he had even told us exactly what card it was, I bet he would even get help in getting the card working. But obviously, when you make hasty generalizations, it degrades your credibility.
This whole article reallly needs to be taken with a grain of salt, as it is an editorial. He did a little informal test and took out of it information and conclusions which supported his obviously biased-towards-windows viewpoint. In a Real hardware test, such as on Tomshardware, Anandtech, etc., they have a section of the article where the hardware/system specs are published in detail. His little snide and sarcastic to some ppl in the feedback part reveal his true view of the Linux in general…
As for windows’ device management, the registry and plugandpray are the biggest computing disaster ever created. Simple text files like in DOS and OS/2 and Linux are simple and direct, and do not require a reload of the whole system to fix driver problems(like a power failure taking out a disk cluster of some_device.sys). And, Linux can load and unload drivers at will.
Also, at the end of a windows install, sometimes devices will not be setup, because some might be newer than the installed version of windows. If you use an up-to-date distro with not-too-exotic hardware, it can all be setup and ready to use the first boot after installation. Compare that to windows: install, reboot, reboot, apply fixes, reboot, install drivers 1,2, and 3, and a reboot or two for each of them.
Anydoby ever put a hard disk into a computer with windows already on it to copy some stuff over and on that reboot or the next be greeted with no devices working(SVGA, sound, network, modem), and hard disks in compatability mode? Remove other hard disk, problem persists. Had to reinstall the OS, as driver reinstalls did not do a thing for the problem. Later on, it was restore from backup instead of reinstall. ARJ, DOS Long File Name Backup and I all got to be real good friends.
Oh, let’s not forget the moronic disappearing network functionality- everything looks good in network control panel, but no connectivity. Remove drivers, remove NIC, reboot, and reinstall network card and drivers. Or the printing system crashing the system, after it mysteriously quit working and no amount of remove and reinstall the driver would make the print system start working again… reinstall or restore, oh well…
I am done with windows and its moronic boot,reboot, install, and reinstall again paradigm. I can only hope that Xandros can soon be able to replace XP on the computers of various ppl I know, so they can have all the goodness I know of Linux, just simplified
i read all comments. looks like another fight between linux vs windows? i am big fan of linux and running three distros on same disk. same problem with oundcards, alsa etc.
his point is–why can’t linux distro work right out of box? as comman man i have expectations to work linux for my monitor, modem, sound, printer and cd player, without any fuss.
”there is no user friendly installer in linux” if something is not working, everytime i have to gothrough command lines why? hope someone will solve dependency problems and make EASY TO USE INSTALLER for any linux program.
MHO is that Linux has good hardware support, but it’s too difficult for n00bs to set up. This generally means that the problem is with hardware detection and driver loading mechanisms, not the drivers them selves.
The OS I’ve used that has the best mechanisms for loading drivers is BeOS. There is absolutely no doubt about this. You can move a hdd with BeOS from one machine to another and it will continue to work without a problem (unless the new hardware is unsupported of course). The reason is that BeOS detects what drivers to load on every boot and doesn’t require anything to be stored on disk for knowing what to do. This may sound like a strategy that leads to awful long boot times, but that’s where BeOS will really amaze you. The system boots in less than 15 seconds, so I guess the hardware detection and driver loading part must take less than 5 seconds. That’s the standards I will always measure operating systems against.
-bogomipz
That’s because Be doesn’t have a very large range of drivers to try
. Preconfigured drivers are the way to go, but initscripts should always have a “stop here and gimme some control” mechanism in case something is preventing you from booting.
I’ve heard from other people about Windows issues with moving from one computer to the next; I’ve never tried it but I’ve seen other people try and fail.
I guess in the worst case the nice thing about text files is that you can use a boot disk/cd to get in and fix things. Anyone know of a boot disk that has regedit on it?
ive never been able to get sound working properly in linux, and i’ve tried several cheap sound cards and on-board sound chips on the motherboards I’ve had.
currently im having trouble getting mandrake 10 to use my nforce2 onboard sound… any suggestions?
I just bought a low end laptop, and I thought I’d put linux on it. What a huge mistake! I installed Fedora Core 2 and it managed to get through the install, but it immediately kernel paniced on a reboot. So I installed Windows 2000 and guess what? It installed flawlessly… It runs fast too!
Just my 2 cents.
Hello,
I tried to use my old pentium 2 motherboard with the latest knoppix. ISA sound cards do not get detected properly, neither do ISA network cards. I realize that ISA is old and no one cares about it anymore, but I’d like to see some BASIC sound blaster support. I tried a SB AWE 32 with no luck. the ISA sound config tool was taken from RedHat and doesn’t work properly.
The author has a point that if win95 can handle it, Linux should. PCI sound cards seem to be NO PROBLEM for me though. I realize that hardware vendors were happy to deal with Microsoft to increase their market share, but the same vendors have probably outsourced or obsoleted all the engineers who developed these sound cards.
by the looks of Creative Lab’s drivers, I’d say none of the original development staff is still there. Took them 1 year to get Audigy drivers to work in WINDOWS.
Bottom line though, if Linux’s market niche (right now) is servers and most servers don’t come with sound cards, why would a sound card manufacturer care about writing Linux drivers? If it doesn’t increase their market share or overall sales, no hardware vendor will develop for linux.
Look, to all the folks bashing this guy, please stop it. This dude is writing from the average end user standpoint, not as a linux god who’s been using linux forever. He is writing about dropping $$$ on a major distro as an average home user, and finding out that one of his most vital pc components may or may not be compatible? I would be pissed too.
And for the average end user, someone should NOT have to go and find modules and compile this or that, just to get some basic hardware functionality, it is just too difficult. The average user doesn’t want to have to do that, nor should they have to, ESPECIALLY when they spent a considerable amount of money on a more user friendly distro! (er, Xandros). And I know that some linux geeks will say, “then stay with windows and leave linux to the pros,” or, “seek help on the forums, that’s what they’re for,” but look dude, again the average home user should not have to do that. If they do though, the most helpful guys will actually assist a noob and get him or her on the right track, I mean, I’ve helped out myself. Represent, guys.
But, this is the point, those who are slamming this cat are missing the picture. He is not talking about a free live CD, or a debian download or a fedora or whatever –
– He is upset at the fact that he SPENT ALMOST AS MUCH MONEY AS A WINDOWS UPGRADE on a full-fledged, “user friendly” Xandros distro and could not get the same functionality out of the box. Now, just stand back and look at the picture for a sec… wouldn’t that bother you too?
P.S. – Don’t get me wrong. I am a linux user, too. But I am trying not to be partial. This guy has a valid point and he should not be flamed and criticized like this, as he brings up a valid argument for linux’ role on the home desktop.
It seems to me that somewhere along the road, lots of linux people lost the atitude I still see in the BSDs:
“We don’t want to be the biggest, or the easiest, just the best.”
But back on topic:
I’ve never had a problem with just getting the sound to work with “kldload snd_driver” in freeBSD.
What is a problem is when you have several sound sources. Ideally, something low-level (like, indeed, the windows sound mixer or BeOS sound system) should combine the different streams and play the result. The best would be, IMHO, if it also presented a simple /dev/dsp – style interface to everything.
(Anyone who knows if it’s possible to make something that will accept multiple streams and treat them separately? A non-lockable /dev/dsp?)
the sound issues are real
By brad (IP: —.biz.rr.com) – Posted on 2004-04-19 16:20:37
ive never been able to get sound working properly in linux, and i’ve tried several cheap sound cards and on-board sound chips on the motherboards I’ve had.
currently im having trouble getting mandrake 10 to use my nforce2 onboard sound… any suggestions?
Yeah mate i have the same soundcard, what kernel are you using ?
if your using the 2.4.2x series go to http://www.nvidia.com and download their unified driver which will make the sound work.
if your using kernel 2.6.x then select the snd-intel8x0 module, you can also use this module in the 2.4.x kernel’s.
do a modprobe snd-intel8x0 see what happens.
If your running 2.6.x your probably running alsa also run alsaconf.
That should get it up and running.
the sound issues are real
By brad (IP: —.biz.rr.com) – Posted on 2004-04-19 16:20:37
ive never been able to get sound working properly in linux, and i’ve tried several cheap sound cards and on-board sound chips on the motherboards I’ve had.
currently im having trouble getting mandrake 10 to use my nforce2 onboard sound… any suggestions?
Yeah mate i have the same soundcard, what kernel are you using ?
if your using the 2.4.2x series go to http://www.nvidia.com and download their unified driver which will make the sound work.
if your using kernel 2.6.x then select the snd-intel8x0 module, you can also use this module in the 2.4.x kernel’s.
do a modprobe snd-intel8x0 see what happens.
If your running 2.6.x your probably running alsa also run alsaconf.
That should get it up and running.
“It seems to me that somewhere along the road, lots of linux people lost the atitude I still see in the BSDs:
‘We don’t want to be the biggest, or the easiest, just the best.”
That’s funny. I’m sorry, I just thought some people could read into things a little more than I expected. Let me spell it out then, this dude spent money on a “user-friendly distro” and he can’t get it working.
Now, some people might reply as per my comment a few comments above, but he dealt with a distro that he paid money for, and is marketed as a possible “replacement for windows” I believe, and he couldn’t get the sound working out of the box? C’mon now.
So, “We don’t want to be the biggest, or the easiest, just the best.” is not true at all.
It just so happens that makers of certain distros seem to have lost that attitude, are marketing as such and charging for it, but are not even coming through with the “biggest, or the easiest” part.
“It just so happens that makers of certain distros seem to have lost that attitude, are marketing as such and charging for it, but are not even coming through with the “biggest, or the easiest” part.”
Well, yeah, won’t disagree with that
(I was thinking more about some of the posters, actually.)
Isn’t this (this “this” being the original article) more a critisism of the distro, and less of Linux in general?
I think so, but he did throw a few other distros in there. But yeah, you’re right, it seems that Xandros took the brunt of it. I am in agreement with him though, in that respect, as Xandros markets itself as a windows-like distro, (though don’t quote me), and I am a fairly experienced linux user and I ran into a ton of snags trying to get things working after I dropped $130 on it. Anger, hate, aggression.
It’s easy, sound card name goggle search. “[Name of sound card] in Linux” I most sound cards use the dame kernel module as another. I have installed debian on around 6 systems I have yet to have one that did not work. I admit some where a pain but if your using Linux you have to know how to config a kernel. Don’t rely on wizards. if you do you need to go back to windows.
You can EASILY load the driver for an ISA soundcard yourself: modprobe snd-{chipsetname}, and it automagically works. To make it work all the time every boot, put several lines at the end of your rc.local:
modprobe snd-cs4235
modprobe snd-pcm
modprobe snd-mixer
modprobe snd-pcm-oss
modprobe snd-mixer-oss
alsamixer set Master unmute 95 95
alsamixer set PCM unmute 85 85
alsamixer set Aux,1 unmute 85 85
OR just install and and sndconfig. This installs the OSS drivers, however. I used this setup for quite some time a while back, when I still had several OSes on my computer. The ISA was good for DOS and OS/2 soundcards, and my ISA modem, both Crystal chipsets- very nice cross platform support back in the day. Well, gotta go. I might decide to order XandrOS tonight
Having read the article and he 135 comments, I think a few points are missed.
First the article tone had to be *deliberatly* choosen to infuriate the (notoriously touchy) Linux community (well at least those that spend much time reading on the web): “The Linux Achilles Heel” for a fscking sound card problem and comparing Linux with Win95. He was sure to get some eyeball !
I’m using Pcs for development and system administration, for me a working sound is one where I get to hear my gaim alerts, and play some mp3.
But in most distro I had installed until the very last (Slackware 9.x), sound deamons where blocking each other and I had to manually make /dev/dsp world writable as a quick fix to get some sound out of the box.
I encountered this problem with most distro I used/tested as workstation (I tested RH, Mandrake, Debian and came back to my old Slackware). This was a minor annoyance for me (sound was no as important as setting printing setting which never allowed me to get as much option out of my printer as windows one does but this is another story), and since I don’t reinstall often, spending 30mn on getting sound work is not a big issue.
But for the average user migrating from Windows it is a major issue.
I’ve installed hundred of Windows stations of various versions and I really think that Linux installation is easier than Windows one (without a ghost you have to go AT LEAST twice to windows update and reboot(same problem if using SUS or SMS)) before having an up to date system. Finding appropriate driver is often a pain particularly if your hardware came with a tweaked on HD install that installed drivers that distributor do not provide anymore …..
But Windows has a perception advantage on Linux : it very often achieve to boot and seem to work with a totally fucked up configuration, 2 years behind patch level, and inappropriate drivers and BSOD frequently (not to add a few dozens of spywares).
I’m often astonished to see the level of degraded experience windows user endure before calling for help (computer crawl under insane load of virus and spyware, display settings on 256 colors, screen frequency on 60Hz …..), but they still often get their work done, and anyway think it is normal. But users want video, printer and sound to work, not work well, but at least seem to. May be Linux experience could be degraded to do so….
DISCLAMERS:
1 – I know my way to get sound working is probably not optimal and I don’t give a sXXt.
2 – I’m still recompiling my kernels, and find some device to only work with a specific kernel(or kernel module): ACPI, USB mouse+touchpad on laptop, USBWebcam… So claims that modern distro do not require specific kernel seem to me really optimistic and still a problem for the average joe.
I have to use my Realtek ALC650 onboard under linux, my PCI card, a Philips Acoustic Edge (VLSI Thunderbird DSP) is entirely unsupported.
Your Philips soundcard will not be supported under Linux. Philips refuse to develop drivers or release even basic register-level documentation. They even tell you this in the product FAQ’s on their website.
Complaints should be directed at Philips.
I had the same experience with Linux. My onboard sound card was a Aureal 8810 onboard with Intel810e chipset based motherboad. Even now, I cannot find a way to use sound on it…I have tried Fedora, Mandrake, Gentoo, Slackware and Knoppix..
Thunderbird DSP is no longer manufactured (check Philips)
Hi,
if you have problems with arch, go to the forum of archlinux…
cu
Kin
according to experts linux installation is easier than windows-i accepted
i buy a soundcard-put it in pci slot and boot linux distro.
kde starts-linux informs me-found new hardware—
would you like linux to search for driver(recommanded)
or would you locate driver files
i locate linux driver files myself in some /dir
linux proceeds and installs soundcard for me.
(no alsaconf no sndconf to run, no modutils to edit, not to compile drivers, no more hassles))
is this year 2010 or am i just daydreaming?????
After three great distros mandrake, fedora and debian, after many years of linux community work worldwide, after such a fantastic gpl softwares why do we stumble upon these small steps????
Thats because Aureal only ever released closed binary OSS drivers for kernels 2.2 and some early 2.4 kernels. Only recently were the reverse engineered ALSA Aureal drivers integrated into the mainstream ALSA branch, and they have only just (In the last *month* or so) been merged into the Linux kernel. So you’ll need a very recent 2.6 kernel with ALSA enabled to get your au8810 to work.
Blame Aureal (and while we’re at it, Creative) for not releasing any specs for your audio chipset.
That’s because Be doesn’t have a very large range of drivers to try
. Preconfigured drivers are the way to go, but initscripts should always have a “stop here and gimme some control” mechanism in case something is preventing you from booting.
Although fewer drivers means less searching I think Be’s solution would work pretty well even with tons of drivers. The way I understand it, each driver has a list of (manufacturer,product) tuples showing all devices it works for. To detect what drivers to load, the system probes the buses, extracts the tuples identifying the devices and searches through the lists in the driver binaries. It doesn’t try to execute any drivers to detect HW, it merely reads out a few bytes and compares them against the IDs of the probed devices.
I’ve heard from other people about Windows issues with moving from one computer to the next; I’ve never tried it but I’ve seen other people try and fail.
Moving Windows from one box to another, usually means uninstalling drivers, installing new ones, making a mess and ultimately reinstalling from scratch (praying that your Linux partitions survive and that you will manage to reinstall your beloved bootloader).
-bogomipz