Slashdot Mirror
Linux's Achilles Heel Apparently Revealed
ahab_2001 writes "In Information Week's latest 'Langa Letter', Fred Langa points to something that he calls Linux's 'Achilles' heel': 'New Linux distros still fail a task that Windows 95 -- yes, 95! -- easily handles, namely working with mainstream sound cards.' After lamenting his difficulties in getting a particular sound card to work with nine Linux distros, he concludes that his experience 'empirically shows that, despite its many good points, Linux still has some huge, gaping holes--holes that Windows plugged almost a decade ago.' (Oddball note: Information Week prefaced the e-mail alert pointing to this article by saying 'Occasionally, we have news or analysis of such importance that it warrants a special alert to you.' Hmm...)"
Is this a record moment for MS, when 95 outperforms a Linux boxen? I just heard a few coworkers keel over dead.
I knew I should have kept my copy of Windows 95!
The ones that came configured with the sound volume set to 0 by default.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
My watch says it's April 19th, not 1st.
:wq
I did set one up once, but all I got out of that was knowing how some weird dude pronounces 'leenucks', whatever that is.
Say it isn't so, Linux doesn't support his on board sound chip set. We're fucked now!
On the other hand, one usually looks into these sort of things before one purchases one's hardware.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
That's as maybe, but if you are implying that sound functioning 50% of the time is somehow worse than sound functioning 0% of the time, then I fear I have wandered into either a Monty Python sketch, the Twilight Zone, or Slashdot.
In any case, it can't be good for my sanity.
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
I know that where I work, having a sound card is critical to operation of the company.
I cannot imagine how someone can function without hearing that Ding! each time a new email arrives. I'd be lost, ever wondering, "do I have another Symantec AV warning about an attempted incoming virus message?"
Linux is doomed if it can't even Ding! when email arrives.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Sound is important on Windows machines because how else are you supposed to know that IIS has gone down or become infected with a virus for the third time this week, than with a lot of "dinging" noises, while you're huddled under your desk?
And that Apple plugged in the 1980's
Oh, wait. On the Mac sound is built in. You don't need a sound card.
Well, geez.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
That's good -- put that on the box: "WARNING: Some sound cards suck and are not supported by Linux. Please select a sound card that doesn't suck before purchasing this distribution of Linux. Thank you."
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
I also recently discovered that RedHat 9 does not recognize the external 5.25" drive that my C64 so easily manages without a hitch.
Do you think Linux will support my Adam tape drive? I better go check...
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
uhh...no, they don't.
These aren't the droids you're looking for...
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
I couldn't get XYZ to work with my sound card
Small FUD-HOWTO:
BTW, I couldn't get "my harddrive" to work with Windows XY.
P.S.: Actually I really had a Western Digital 40GB harddrive that crashed the BIOS in both an Athlon and P2 and therefore wasn's usable in Windows98, since Linux ignores the BIOS the harddrive worked fine (of course booting off it was impossible).
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.
Ah ha, he forgot 'I RTFMed'!
That would be a cool warning lable. Better then
": Improper use will result in blindness, hysterical laughter and permanent insanity"
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
...and you don't need to see our identification...
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
I've got an old copy of Windows 95 if anyone is interested. I'll start the bidding at $50.00.
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
I got mine from bittorrent, not a box, you insensitive clod :)
Great then linux saves people from having to listen to garbage sound from beefed up 90's adlib/sb8 ( or worst ) sound cards. Thats not a flaw thats a service. Set the standard : "if your tweeter can do better it will NOT install the feakin soundboard." ( you know how hard it is to force a GUS max not to work properly ? ).
-- forget
I know dude. Check out how easy it was for me to get my sound card working: (from my email archives...)
I have sound on Linux. I see you are quite shocked. 'Twas nothing really. I know you are thinking to yourself, 'Wait, don't you have a soundcard with a chipset that has a closed architecture so no real drivers exist for it?' Now you are remembering, 'Oh wait, there was that sourceforge project where some dudes got binaries from the Aureal company and wrote a kernel module around them so that good people, like yourself, with the Turtle Beach Montego II soundcard could, in theory, have sound under linux.' That's absolutely correct, good memory. 'Ah, but wasn't that project dead like two years ago?' Yes, yes, quite correct. I will now anticipate all your other questions and my answers in a much more readable format:
Q: So, how did you get the latest source?
A: Well, strangely, they didn't have a tarball for the latest source so I had to download each file individually from a crappy CVS web interface.
Q: Wow, that must have sucked. Did you do that first thing?
A: Oh, definitely not. I took the latest tarball off the site and spent a good 90 minutes trying to get that to compile.
Q: Ah, so when you got the latest source, how did that compiling thing work out? Good, right?
A: Oh it was fine except for the compiling part. To compile, it needed the source for the kernel I'm currently using. I didn't have that.
Q: What? Why not?
A: Ahh, well you see Mandrake doesn't put the source for your kernel in the normal place by default. I spent a lot of time learning about what they do instead. I can tell you all about it.
Q: Will you, please?
A: Certainly. You see, they like to use this special rpm called kernel-source to build your kernel source tree. This way, they can use the same large library of source files to make many kernel source trees depending on your system. kernel-source is apparently controlled by this Mandrake program called urpmi. Now, urpmi is a complicated wrapper for rpm configuration stuff. urpmi knows how your system was installed so when you ask it to give you the source for your current kernel, it thinks about it for a second, and then kindly asks for CD3 from the installation process.
Q: Wait, didn't you give those CDs away for somebody else to install Mandrake on their machine?
A: Sure did.
Q: So, you probably just gave up for the night, huh?
A: Negative. You can tell urpmi to forget about that third CD and look in a new place for source files, like an ftp server in Wisconsin.
Q: Wow, how'd you figure that out?
A: Oh, I'm on the Internet.
Q: So, urmpi got the raw source rpms and then this other thing built your particular source tree?
A: Yep, it was actually kinda cool.
Q: So then you went back to compile the kernel module, right?
A: Oh yeah, went back and compiled that like nobody's business.
Q: So, then everything worked, right?
A: OH, good one dude! Hello, this is not a Mac people. You can't expect this stuff to just work by pushing a few keys.
Q: Sorry. So, what next?
A: Well, compiling my business created a file called au8830.o, which it kindly copied to the right place in my modules directory. So, I did an 'insmod au8830' which I recently learned is the command to load a module named au8830.o. That
didn't work because it said the module was compiled with gcc version 2 instead
of gcc version 3
Q: Wait, didn't you use gcc version 3 something to compile?
A: Sure did.
Q: Uh well then, how come...
A: Ahh, you see, those old binaries these dudes built this module around were compiled in gcc 2 something. insmod saw this and got mad. Soooo.... I had to flex a little and bust out an 'insmod -f au8830'. Yeah, I forced it. Recognize
the skillz.
Q: Wow, what happened next?
A: Well, as soon as I loaded the module, all of this static came out of my speakers. I played an mp3 and if I turned the sound up lo
Now it can't go mainstream because one pundit has trouble with one easily-replaced $10 sound card. Next, they'll say it can't go mainstream because the borders on the "Cancel" buttons are not quite the right shade, or because you can't install MS security patches.
How your tiny brain couldn't find this Windows 2000 Soundblaster Audigy Platinum on the Creatives site?
1) Buy Windows XP for $200
2) Download Linux for free and buy a $20 soundcard
I'm really having a hard time making up my mind...
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
GET YOUR WEAPONS READY! --DR.LIGHT
Can I buy some of that pot from you?