I have just spent a lot of my time trying out every sound producing program on the distro to see what will work with esd and what will not. Answer: apart from gnome and the gnome cd player, Absolutely nothing!
Seems there is no way at present to get programs to share the sound device via esd (yes, I tried them all with esddsp). Not Totem, not mplayer, not realplay..nothing to be done except shut down esd.
So I want to ask, if anyone knows or cares, or even reads this stuff, what is esd doing in Debian? And why does it not come with a giant up-front CAVEAT EMPTOR so I don't waste all my time trying to make it work when it clearly does not?
Also I wonder what standards, if any, Debian requires of software to be included in the packaging system? I have seend hundreds of examples now and with very few exceptions I can only describe them as brain-damaged efforts which neither work nor have the appearance that they will ever work. And no way to know without spending the time to download and try, and then de-install. I don't mind beta-testing for develepors, in fact I enjoy it. But too many of these packages do no rate as beta releases...and as far as I am concerned, alpha versions have no place out in the wild. To me, alpha is in-shop being developed/debugged; beta is fully functional and debugged and only needing user feedback. Many of the so-called beta releases I see are really alpha in my opinion and should not be foisted on the public-at-large, at the very least not without a large WARNING sign up-front.
If Linux is ever to be a realistic option for the general computer user, this area, for one, must be brought up to kind of standard.
OK, I'm done. Any other opinions out there? Anyone home here?
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Rant
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supergringo
- Posts: 8
- Joined: 2005-05-18 03:06
- Location: Vancouver Canada
Rant
There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.
--HST
--HST
I don't really know esd nor esddsp, but here is a few things you can do:
- Get the native esd-speaking programs to avoid using esddsp
- Get a soundcard which has hardware mixer, so you won't have to use those 'sound daemons'. Not only the big-and-expensive cards have this feature; my motherboard has an on-board audio chip which do have hardware mixer, and the motherboard itself costed 4000 HUF (~16 Euro).
- Use an other 'sound daemon', like arts. I didn't have any troubnle with arts or artsdsp, though I didn't use it frequently.
mplayer do have an esd output, just do an
mplayer -ao help
to sind out if yours has it. If not, you can recompile mplayer to have esd audio output.
I don't really know what esd is doing in Debian, but you do don't think that only because YOU was unable to get it to work, it should be removed from the distro entirely, do you?
There are many programs included in Debian, some of them not really stable or useful to many people, but maybe there are others who think is absolutely the opposite way.
If a program can't be installed or used by the usual next-next-yes,accept-next-finish sequence, it doesn't mean that the program is useless.
I use many programs which gives headache to other people on sight, however I find them useful and flexible enough to use them. Not easy, but flexible.
Lacking 'standards' in a way you mean it is one of the most great things in Linux in my opinion. This means, you CAN choose what to use, which 'standard' fits your needs, which is the best for you, and you can use it, or simply throw it away if you find an other which is better. No need to stuck at one thing or at another.
Sure, this means you have to understand a thing or two. My opinion is, if you want to drive a car, you have to have a minor understanging how the engine works, that the gearbox is, and things like that. Dealing with difficult things do require understanding of that thing. Computers aren't an exception, they are part of the rule in this case. Any other opinion is an illusion, from you will wake up a day or on an other.
If you want to know things, just ask. If you can't deal with something in a way, there is always an other way.
Here is my opinion. You asked for it :-)
- Get the native esd-speaking programs to avoid using esddsp
- Get a soundcard which has hardware mixer, so you won't have to use those 'sound daemons'. Not only the big-and-expensive cards have this feature; my motherboard has an on-board audio chip which do have hardware mixer, and the motherboard itself costed 4000 HUF (~16 Euro).
- Use an other 'sound daemon', like arts. I didn't have any troubnle with arts or artsdsp, though I didn't use it frequently.
mplayer do have an esd output, just do an
mplayer -ao help
to sind out if yours has it. If not, you can recompile mplayer to have esd audio output.
I don't really know what esd is doing in Debian, but you do don't think that only because YOU was unable to get it to work, it should be removed from the distro entirely, do you?
There are many programs included in Debian, some of them not really stable or useful to many people, but maybe there are others who think is absolutely the opposite way.
If a program can't be installed or used by the usual next-next-yes,accept-next-finish sequence, it doesn't mean that the program is useless.
I use many programs which gives headache to other people on sight, however I find them useful and flexible enough to use them. Not easy, but flexible.
Lacking 'standards' in a way you mean it is one of the most great things in Linux in my opinion. This means, you CAN choose what to use, which 'standard' fits your needs, which is the best for you, and you can use it, or simply throw it away if you find an other which is better. No need to stuck at one thing or at another.
Sure, this means you have to understand a thing or two. My opinion is, if you want to drive a car, you have to have a minor understanging how the engine works, that the gearbox is, and things like that. Dealing with difficult things do require understanding of that thing. Computers aren't an exception, they are part of the rule in this case. Any other opinion is an illusion, from you will wake up a day or on an other.
If you want to know things, just ask. If you can't deal with something in a way, there is always an other way.
Here is my opinion. You asked for it :-)