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Linux 3.4 Released
jrepin writes with news of today's release (here's Linus's announcement) of Linux 3.4: "This release includes several Btrfs updates: metadata blocks bigger than 4KB, much better metadata performance, better error handling and better recovery tools. There are other features: a new X32 ABI which allows to run in 64 bit mode with 32 bit pointers; several updates to the GPU drivers: early modesetting of Nvidia Geforce 600 'Kepler', support of AMD RadeonHD 7xxx and AMD Trinity APU series, and support of Intel Medfield graphics; support of x86 cpu driver autoprobing, a device-mapper target that stores cryptographic hashes of blocks to check for intrusions, another target to use external read-only devices as origin source of a thin provisioned LVM volume, several perf improvements such as GTK2 report GUI and a new 'Yama' security module."
I must be getting old.
Hi,
I've always used Windowz and I consider myself an exceptional Visual Basic programmer, so I know computers pretty good. In fact I got an A- in my programming class last term. But I'm a little wary of how much power Microsoft has in the computer field. Many of my friends use RedHat and I've recently installed it on my machine at home. Although I haven't had as much chance to play with it as I'd like, I've been greatly impressed.
This weekend I gave some thoughts to the things that are wrong with Linux. I hope no one minds having some flaws pointed out. I'd like to help make RedHat stronger so it can conquer MS. Hopefully RedHat will hear this (crossing fingers) and address these. I think with a little effort, RedHat's Linux can defeat Microsoft's Windows! :)
To begin with, there are too many different flavors of RedHat. Browsing a list on Amazon, I saw they made varients under the codenames of Mandrake, Debian and Slackware, just to name a few. I know that I'm very new to RedHat so maybe this is obvious but it seems like RedHat should just sell a few different flavors of its operating system. Perhaps one for the desktop and one for a server? Could someone explain why RedHat produces dozens of different versions of Linux?
Secondly did you know that anyone can view the source code to Linux! I think that RedHat shouldn't make its code available. After all, what keeps Microsoft from stealing RedHat's ideas and putting it into Windows? My friend says that FreeBSD stole the TCP/IP stack from DOS a long time ago and Microsoft is always looking for revenge for that. Plus it seems to me like RedHat is just giving away its ideas for free. And what keeps hackers or terrorists from tampering with the code and putting a virus in every computer?
On a related note, why doesn't RedHat write Linux in assembly? My friend says that's what Microsoft does for Windows, and that's why Windows is faster and more stable than Linux.
Next RedHat definitely should kill -9 (ha, ha!) the command line. Microsoft finally gave up DOS when Windows 2000 came out. I'm suprised that RedHat hasn't migrated away from...whatever its version of DOS is called (Bash, I think?) But maybe this is planned for a future release?
Finally Linux needs games! RedHat will never be successful in the home without games. They should also tell M$ to release a version of Office for Linux too. And Internet Explorer!
Have a nice day! Go Linux!!
I tried btrfs, and ended up going back to ext4. Hoped btrfs might be a good choice for a small hard drive, and it is-- it uses space more efficiently. But it's not a good choice for a slow hard drive or the obsolete computer that the small size goes with.
Firefox ran especially poorly on btrfs. I was told this is because Firefox does lots of syncs, and btrfs had very poor performance on syncs. Maybe this improvement in performance on metadata is just the thing to fix that?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
As much as Linux is doing rather well despite the plethora of different versions and security risk from the open code base, using it is rather risky for legal reasons as well. Red Hat stole much of Linux from SCO's Caldera, and are distributing it without paying royalties, meaning users could be on the hook for several hundred dollars a license and casting the future of Red Hat's offerings in jeopardy.. Litigation is ongoing now, and experts expect SCO to win a crushing verdict any day now. Linux has some neat features, but there's a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the community about its legal future.
Nice troll.
Yeah.. No
My thoughts exactly. Obvious troll is obvious. I especially like the overt mention of FUD.
Have they fucking fixed that regression with the USB option driver yet? Fucking option_instat_callback: 108 errors every-fucking-where.
Amusing troll. It would have been more subtle if you didn't reveal your knowledge of kill signals and shell names. You should have tried to call "bash" something like "clash" or "smash".
What issue are you having? Audio has always worked flawlessly on my Lenovo G560 running Debian 6, Ubuntu 11.10 and 12.04. The last legitimate issue I recall having was a conflict between pulse audio and Skype a couple of years ago on an Acer laptop but Skype was the only application that exhibited any issue so I assume the app itself was the guilty party. I can't remember the last time I've had any problems since then with either flash, windows games running through wine, mplayer or anything else.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Several years ago.
Pulse Audio has been working flawlessly for me for years now on all of my laptops and desktops. I'm especially happy with the ability to send audio to my media center over the network from any of my devices. It's changed how I listen to audio in my home and I could never go back to not having pulse audio. Also being able to combine multiple soundcards on my audio recording rig has saved me a mint on M-Audio hardware.
Damn, I had mod points yesterday. Consider this my unofficial +1 Funny
I believe you are misinformed. As far as the kernel goes, there has only been one standard for sound cards for over a decade now: ALSA
Don't feed the trolls...by which I mean me.
At present there are two systems people use for audio, pulseaudio comes with most distributions these days standard (for end users, rather limited and full of latency) and JACK (for professional audio usage, uses a callback interface though)
low latency and low power tend to be at odds with each other, what with low latency frequently waking up the cpu etc. The only reason pulseaudio was went with on the desktop is for some reason they seem to think we care about a fraction of a percent more cpu usage on my plugged in desktop machine over a more useful audio subsystem. (Their reasoning being TABLETS ARE THE FUTURE!, or something along those lines)
They have, pulse for end users and Jack for people who care about their audio.
Why not one interface? Because the low latency goals of jack conflict with the low power goals of pulseaudio (designed for use on netbooks and tablets etc) why desktop users had to suffer so much into the pulse transition just to cater to that crowd I have no idea.
Was looking for a "stereo mix" option to record some audio being played. Doesn't seem to be an option in linux. Works great in windows though.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
It's a common FUD. Nowaday Linux audio works just fine, PulseAudio as a sound server (mixer) and ALSA to talk to the hardware, the rest (OpenAL, gstreamer, OSS, ESD) are either obsolete or totally different stuff unessential to audio playback. Earlier problems related to closed source softwares (Flash, Skype) or badly written HW drivers are mostly fixed.
It's not even a nice troll actually. It's outright sad that someone even bothered to write that. It isnt offensive or even remotely believable, it's just dumb uninteresting garbage.
"Another" audio subsytem? Today standard is PulseAudio on ALSA, and that it has been like that for at least 4 years. Before ALSA there was OSS but Linux developers disagree with how OSS do the sound mixing and resampling in kernel space (for better latency, they said) and OSS went closed source for awhile. PulseAudio is an effort to unite all the sound server/mixer (ESD from GNOME, aRTs from KDE or ALSA's own dmix) plus some nifty features like better battery life (less wake ups per second).
Update your FUD once in awhile, please.
Thanks for the laughs. Keep it up!
The Pulse/Jack difference isn't power consumption, it's intended use.
Pulse provides a simple API for just making noise.
Jack provides a low-latency API (like you said) for the purposes for music creation and other things that require true low latency audio (and no, that doesn't include games) with a significant trade-off in complexity.
The new x86-64 ABI with 32-bit pointers is cool because it allows you to get the architecture improvements of x86-64, such as extra registers and RIP-relative addressing, without increasing memory usage substantially due to larger data structures. Also, 64-bit operations will just use the 64-bit registers. The vast majority of programs simply do not need the extra address space.
One reason that this ABI works so well is that the majority of the x86-64 instruction set uses 32-bit operations. Some operations involving pointers can be done in one instruction without using a temporary register to load a 64-bit constant.
Windows actually also can support this, in theory, but you're on your own in trying to communicate with the Win32 API. The linker option /LARGEADRESSAWARE:NO causes the NT kernel to limit your program's address space to 2^31 bytes.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Why do you need low latency for typical music playback on desktop? It is only for audio professional doing mixing from multiple sources. For laptop users like me, saving 1 W means 5~10% more battery life.
It is something the FS should handle. The "Just fix the program," is a bad answer because while maybe one could change Firefox, you'll find another program that can't be changed because the nature of what it does requires many syncs.
The low level systems should be robustly written to do what apps need, they shouldn't be telling apps "You can't do that."
Sound is still screwed up from Java, unfortunately. I've all but given up trying to get Java to work with PulseAudio properly. Ubuntu 12.04 and (pick one) OpenJDK or Oracle Sun JDK, 6 or 7, I've tried them all singly or in holy and unholy combinations. I'd blame the application (Subsonic), but I can't get it to work using the Java APIs directly from my own code, either, so I'm fairly sure it's in the interaction between PulseAudio and Java. Sound does work OK from non-Java apps. I'm to the point where I'm just about to hold my nose and run Subsonic in a Windows XP VirtualBox VM.
Posting anonymously due to the shame of suggesting XP.
CAPTCHA: repent (!)
Wait, whut?
Start Pulseaudio, start an audio recorder. Pavucontrol can let you record "monitor", which basically means your stereomix option. Does that help?
No it isnt, it's a retarded pointless waste of time troll. Sure it would have been decent ten years ago, but now that sort of lame crap shouldnt even be considered trolling. That sort of garbage should simply result in an IP ban.
Sounds like you might have a hardware issue because I've been running Subsonic since Ubuntu 11.04 on multiple different devices and have never had a problem with audio playing. As a matter of fact, I find it works better in Linux than it does on Windows Vista which is the last version of Windows I've used on the bare metal.
When will the nightmare that is Linux audio be comprehensively solved?
You're kidding, right? It was a decade ago when I last had any difficulty with audio (because I didn't know what I was doing). What, are you trying to get umpteen thousand sound using apps to play together nicely?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
I'm going with dumb uninteresting garbage as well.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Would you two please just go get a room? We adults have important things to talk about.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Boy are you lucky. The train-wreck audio problem was ONE of the reasons I had to dump Ubu11 and all of its variants. I tried to get off of Windows, but alas, it was not to be. Are you running the 64bit (Not Recommended) distro?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
yeah......mostly.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
How can you calmly discuss his death when thousands are dying in Africa in horrible ways every single day? You're not grieving and having moments of silence every two seconds! Fucking disrespectful sociopath!
Hmm...I'm sorry you're having problems but I have to say that I haven't had a single audio problem in Linux for years and years now. With Ubuntu everything just works flawlessly and this is on several different hardware systems including laptops and desktops. As a matter of fact, with the real time kernel and JACK, I've had a much better experience doing pro audio work using ardour on my linux box than I did with Protools on my windows computer.
Start Pulseaudio? Never even heard of that. On windows I just chose the recording source Stereo Mix. Why does linux make it difficult?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
PulseAudio is unessential to audio playback, too. All I've seen it do is provide another level of indirection and a configuration problem (actual, not FUD). OSS will probably live forever as an API because at least its cross platform for unix and is actually sane to write code for.
What is the rationale for moving up to 3.4 so soon?
Obviously big tech companies, as well as the Mozilla Foundation play the versioning game aggressively, but the Linux kernel always had a reputation of being conservative.
On Ubuntu you just have to start and audio recorder........
Pulse Audio is built right-in the Ubuntu. So no, "linux" doesn't make it "difficult".
If you have more than one audio card, be prepared for it to be a huge pain in the ass to get it running. Double that if your secondary card has more features than your primary but was manufactured more than 8 years ago.
I don't know. Prior to the advent of pulse audio on my distros of choice, I had audio issues from time to time. Usually small stuff like audio randomly stopping working or not being able to play certain applications simultaneously. But when pulse audio was released and stabilized, my Linux audio problems came to an abrupt halt. Hopefully, it will just keep getting better and better.
It's true that most programs won't need 64-bit address space - right now - but that's only as long as their memory requirements are within 2GB. If Linux itself is 64-bit, then is there any compelling reason that the ABIs were made 32-bit? In fact, what exactly are the x86 targets for Linux - is it both 32-bit and 64-bit PCs? If that's the case, wouldn't there exist 2 versions of Linux in the tree, and wouldn't it make sense for the 32-bit Linux to have a 32-bit ABI, and the 64-bit Linux to have a 64-bit ABI?
Having said that, I welcome Linux adding an ABI to the kernel, and hope that that forms the basis of device drivers going forward, so that drivers can be work seamlessly from one Linux version to another going forward, even if it hasn't so far.
One of the fantastic features I've been using as a direct result of pulseaudio is being able to use all of my sound cards simultaneously. It forms the basis of my multi-room audio system at home and also comes in very handy when I set up security systems and need to pipe audio around to different listening stations. I'm not sure what problem you're having but I couldn't live without pulseaudio.
You don't need it for music playback, but it can become noticeable when playing games.
...that is, it will become noticeable when playing games in the distant future, when Linux actually has games.
From what I understand, Microsoft did write portions of NT in x86 assembly in the old days to make it not crawl, and that was one of the things that caused less portability b/w the different NTs. But these days, w/ CPU power being what it is, they don't have to, and neither does Linux. In fact, if I understand right, from Vista onwards, they've done everything in C/C++ only, and not bothered about assembly. That's also what makes Windows 8 so portable to ARM.
Pulseaudio works as a system service out of the box on linux. The whole thing is completely transparent. If you don't have a clue what you are talking about maybe you should just be polite and keep your mouth closed. Mmmkay?
Er, well, tablets /are/ the future.
Linux is never going to get significantly more share of the desktop. There was a brief chance of catching-on during the Vista debacle, but MS has reestablished its grip on that hardware market.
Meanwhile we've got a generation growing up with palm computers called cell phones. This has kicked open the OS market and significantly kicked open the app market - we've got a generation that is a lot less locked in to MS as vendor, and a lot more in tune with portability of data format.
Tablets are just big cell phones. MS is too late to the game on cell phones to lock down that hardware market. It's relatively wide open, and it will be feeding a generation that isn't nearly as xenophobic about whateverinhell brand they're running, as long as it interfaces with everyone else. Linux can be a major normal player here, rather than something a handful of self-styled renegade / hobbyists switch Windows boxes to do.
Roughly speaking of course. And putting myself in the latter category of old-people who aren't leaving the desktop any time soon.
Just tablets /are/ the future, not a sort of speedbump like netbooks were. People will skip desktops the same way a significant number of us have skipped having a land-line telephone; we didn't need one in college, so we never bothered afterwards.
(but yeah, agree about audio. gimmie jack.)
Last time I checked, "Linux" had plenty of games.
Try FreeBSD instead. Or PC-BSD, which is essentially FreeBSD with a fancy installer.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Why do you need audio playback on a typical desktop? For laptop users like me, saving all audio related watts by using my portable music player means better battery life.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
The problems with Pulseaudio were partly caused by buggy drivers, partly by buggy programs and partly by distributions switching to Pulseaudio before the other problems were sufficiently addressed. There were plenty of audio problems before it came along and neither keeping things as they were nor using jack for everyone would have been trouble-free. Jack developers have never advocated it for ordinary desktop users. My experience on both desktop and laptop has been that after a couple of problematic releases of Ubuntu, audio became much less painful overall. Now, dealing with audio is generally much easier than before Pulseaudio came along.
No it isnt, it's a retarded pointless waste of time troll.
Hey! :)
Touché?
FreeBSD already did. OSS. One day Linux will dump the pulse related crap and things will come full circle.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Why the heck a GNU icon and not a penguin? GNU is not Linux, and this is about the kernel not an OS.
I've always used Windowz and I consider myself an exceptional Visual Basic programmer ...
Ick.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Actually if I have any complaint about Linux its the fact that most of your assistance comes from google (the same with any os/complex hardware) and there is so much outdated documentation out there.
Someone whose card wasn't detected might well find information telling them how to play with those obsolete technologies. You might even still be able to install some of the stuff it tells you to. Actually with old documentation it likely tells you download some tarball onto your binary distro and ./configure, make, make install it! I know far too many people who turn perfectly good systems into nasty unworkable crap that way. The sad thing is they are usually older *nix hackers who learned things this way before repos existed and were fairly complete.
Seriously kids install binaries for your distro. Failing that, alter distro source rpms to build rpms that are as you need them. Failing that use an rpm explicitly marked as arch independent and alter it and any dependencies to match their labels on your distro (yum localinstall NOT rpm -i). Failing that, build an rpm that does so yourself. Replace all that with debs where appropriate in deb land. If you have a guide that starts by telling you to download a tarball and install it then try getting the rpm and following from there if you can't find one specific to your distro.
As much as Linux is doing rather well despite the plethora of different versions and security risk from the open code base ...
You're an idiot. Those are features, dummy. Educate yourself. You're seriously lacking $clue.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
I use Linux daily. Fine system except for pulseaudio. Are there any full-featured desktop distros that don't depend on that terrible sound server? Can someone with weak linux fu (me) recompile gnome and all the apps to go back to ALSA?
I could see Linux making inroads into the business desktop world if it ever got a decent exchange replacement.
Nice troll.
You need to raise your standards. That was pathetic.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
It's a common FUD. Nowaday Linux audio works just fine
My desktop still can't auto-switch between speakers and headphones when the latter are plugged in and out, on any distro (it just plays sound through both of them). The relevant bugs have been in Ubuntu database for years now.
Why is the GNU logo the one that marks this story, when it's specifically about the Linux kernel, and not GNU userland? Among the keywords, GNU shouldn't even be there for this story, and the logo for this story should have just been the penguin logo.
Usually trolls are funny, witty, and somewhat related to reality. Usually.
I thought it was supposed to be satire and less funny. This list seems like things a novice or normal everyday user would think. Just reading the summary I thought that the list seems useful and good upgrades, but the average user wouldn't give two shits about it. You think the average user will say "Shit! Linux now has X86 autoprobing! Goodbye Windows!" No way in hell. This post is satire. Basically, a list this techno-specific is for CS geeks not for casual users or even everyday enthusiasts who like computers and maybe even know a decent amount about them (but don't know what things like autoprobing or cryptographic hashes are). The satire here is that this person knows *some* about computers but is still pointing out the basic things an average user would ask.
Every response, so far, is a perfect example of the problem. Why does RedHat have so many flavors of Linux? I know that you'll say that's not correct, but the point here is that the branding of Linux doesn't make that clear. And the answers, so far, have taken the tact that the question was stupid instead of saying "damn, we've given a list of great CS features but the average user is still wondering why RedHat has so many flavors of Linux?" The responses have ignored the fact that most people don't understand that Linux is a kernel and not an OS proper. That's the satire. The basic questions don't get answered in lieu of "wow what a great CS feature you should just know it" type answers.
And, no, I didn't write the original. Just when I read it and the responses I immediately thought satire. Now, perhaps the OP will say he was trying to be funny. Well, then it was a terrible attempt because it's not. But great satire.
What's so bad about it? Care to elaborate?
You are the garbage.
But that costs space, weight, money, and perhaps time, plus almost certainly complexity when it comes to charge the thing(s) at the end of the day.
If I'm out and about ("traveling,") and my laptop is open, I prefer to play music from it because it has the best interface. Both my phone and my laptop can access the same music (thanks to Subsonic), but I like having a real keyboard and pointer for selecting things and it's fewer physical boxes to fuck with. (And, no, I'm not -also- going to carry a dedicated music player -- even with cargo pants, I'll always prefer to have a pocket knife and a backup pocket knife over any other redundant gear on my person, and that's already getting silly: I don't also need three music players. FFS, I'm traveling, and my gear is already heavy enough.)
YMMV, but if I've already got a particular bit of kit out and in front of me and it can do the thing that I myself want to be doing, I generally prefer to use it for that rather than an additional box. (And playing music should not be a stressful operation for a normal laptop, as long as the screen is already on because I'm actively using it -- stuffing a few milliWatts out through the headphone jack is not a big deal.)
Back to the topic: The discussion sounds a whole lot like Windows, to me. There's the usual way of doing audio (which might be efficient and is never low-latency), and then there's ASIO (which might not be power-efficient but is low-latency as a design parameter). It's damn near exactly like this discussion between PulseAudio and JACK, respectively: Both have different design goals.
And more to the point: Use them both, as needed. *shrug* Use them at the same time, for all I care. (Last I looked, all of the *nix audio kits could be integrated together on a single machine in any fashion the heart desires.)
Kid-proof tablet..
Just because YOU don't need, you don't have to poo-poo the whole low-latency thing. I find audio latency *very* annoying. Yes, I mix and master (or, I try to - it takes Gentoo-level attention to detail and configuration to get something half reasonable going).
But even when "just playing" music, I find it a much more satisfying and pleasant experience when I click on something in the GUI, that the change is heard immediately. To the point that a normal desktop I find stultifying to try to play music on when I'm browsing, listening to this and that, to pick out a playlist.
Have you ever tried a good low-latency setup? You might not know what you're missing.
Except the courts ruled that SCO owns nothing (SCO v Novell), and thus SCO will lose SCO vs IBM and RedHat v SCO because they no longer have any legs to stand on.
Yes, that was the joke.
[citation needed]
[Old Man mode]: I remember a time before PulseAudio, and before JACK, and before ALSA: The Linux kernel had some built-in drivers ("OSS-Free"?) which supported adequate functionality for every sound card/chip on the list, and if you wanted more features or support you could just pay 4front for a better driver (and they were always worth the minimal price).
And: Everything. Just. Worked. Always. Hardware settings (back when sound cards still had configurable analog sections(!)) were deterministic and reliable, and getting excellent sound from *random_app* was a foregone conclusion.
Much fun was had, for instance, with "cat /dev/audio > /dev/st0" to dump a radio show (reliably! without problems! in the plain-and-simple way that Unix is supposed to be!) to DDS tape.
Now, this was 17 (or so) years ago. Anything involving further difficulty, at any stage of the game on a user level, on the Linux sound front is a step backward.
Now, get the fuck off my lawn.
[/Old Man mode]
Kid-proof tablet..
I swear it was 12 years ago Windows had reached version 2000!!! Who knows where they are now! Give it up, Lunix.
That's a bummer.
As a counterpoint: Can you tell me how to turn off that same feature under Windows? I *don't* want it to auto-switch, but it insists upon it.
Kid-proof tablet..
Has the newer btrfs finally fixed the sync problems? Hours long dist-upgrade of Ubuntu is NOT fun.
You can talk
Right, Linux audio works nowadays. Almost. Except when PulseAudio starts corrupting audio. Or stops outputting audio. Or hangs. Or forcibly mutes my headphones, requiring me to call amixer after PulseAudio has started. Or requires me to re-learn something that I learnt to do with ALSA, and now I need to start over. And except when GUI tools decide to hide ALSA devices when PulseAudio is running, ruining my ability to unmute my inputs or fine tune my volume control in many other ways.
And I can't "stop using PulseAudio", because: /etc/apt/preferences.d. I learnt how to use APT pinning solely for getting rid of PulseAudio. That should speak volumes for how broken it is.
1. When somebody asks me for help with their audio, I can't simply go and uninstall it every time.
2. Certain distributions, such as Ubuntu, make it extremely difficult to remove PulseAudio.
3. Even distributions like Debian do install it automatically, so you need to ban it in
Funny enough, I was using PulseAudio long before it became popular, because it was arguably the best network audio server for casual use. I had to stop doing that because it started breaking the sound in many applications, playing with my volume, etc. It was also funny when the authors decided that the mode in which I was using PulseAudio (as a system-wide daemon) was "unsupported", and asked distros to get rid of their init scripts, thereby breaking my dedicated sound server. Not that it isn't trivial to fix, but why would anyone remove a feature in that manner? It was probably the distros fault, since Debian are still keeping the init script, but I wasn't using Debian at the time. One day I had my sound server working, and the other day I was greeted with a message telling me what I was doing is a bad idea and I should stop doing it ASAP.
Actually if I have any complaint about Linux its the fact that most of your assistance comes from google (the same with any os/complex hardware) and there is so much outdated documentation out there.
I agree, that is why I include my distro name and version in my search, plus you can limit results in time (pages update in the las 24 hours, month, year, etc...).
Tomorrow is another day...
I still remember that message, on Oct 1991, from a guy by the name of Linus Benedict Torvalds on comp.os.minix
"Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote :-) "
their own device drivers? Are you without a nice project and just dying
to cut your teeth on a OS you can try to modify for your needs? Are you
finding it frustrating when everything works on minix? No more all-
nighters to get a nifty program working? Then this post might be just
for you
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Lip sync for video, skipping through video, video audio sync in general.
Am I the only one playing movies in linux? Guess so. Weird the XBMC guys make that linux software just me for, though.
This sounds like a driver bug, in which case you shold file a bug upstream. Both my wife's laptop (Ubuntu 12.04) and my laptop (Archlinux) do this without problems, plus you can turn this feature on/off in alsamixer.
for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
Like I said, bugs have already been there in Launchpad when I first hit this, three years ago or thereabouts. It seems to be a hardware-specific problem with telling the outputs apart (basically, it doesn't distinguish front/back jacks). but it affects one of the more common Realtek chipsets that were used in the motherboards at that time.
Why do you need audio playback on a typical desktop? For laptop users like me, saving all audio related watts by using my portable music player means better battery life.
I agree completely, it's much easier to buy an Apple product to playback audio than attempting to make Linux do so.
What do you need ext2 for? Practically you can use ext4 for all use cases that call for ext2. Try formatting the drive with mke2fs -t ext4 -O ^has_journal. (Caveat: Google for the exact command.) The ^ in ^has_journal means "no" journal.
Start Pulseaudio? Never even heard of that. On windows I just chose the recording source Stereo Mix. Why does linux make it difficult?
Starting from Windows 7 Microsoft has hidden the Stereo Mix option (due to pressure from Big Media?), so it's not that easy anymore.
Yeah, they mostly come at night... mostly...
Defining Statistics and Social Research
I assumed from your nick that you knew what upstream means. What I meant is that the bug should not be filed with Ubuntu (Launchpad), it should be filed with the audio subsystem of the kernel. Also, Ubuntu updates the kernel infrequently, especially if you're still on 10.04 or some other old version, so it could be that the bug is fixed in a newer kernel than yours.
for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
Could be wrong, but I believe that the Trinity Desktop (it's continued development of KDE 3) relies solely on ALSA regardless of what distro you're running.
Apathy Sucks, Nobody for President!
I know this is a funny troll but you are right about the games. The only reason I still use windows as my primary OS is that lack of big titles on Linux.
If the measure of a troll is how seriously people take it, GP's doing very well...
It took about 4 reads before your post didn't say "titties".
That's a bummer.
As a counterpoint: Can you tell me how to turn off that same feature under Windows? I *don't* want it to auto-switch, but it insists upon it.
Depends on the audio hardware and driver, but for many it should be under advanced sound settings, like this Realtek example: http://www.sevenforums.com/attachments/sound-audio/132788d1295356338-switch-between-headphones-speakers-capture5.jpg
I know what upstream means, I just missed it in your reply. IIRC, there was one as well - in any case, that's the job of the distro folk to do as needed. It's not crucial for me because Linux is not my primary OS, and I don't do anything there where this makes a big difference; it's just a mild annoyance.
As also noted earlier, this isn't Ubuntu specific - it repros just as well in a fully up-to-date Arch, for example.
I use Linux mainly to play SW:TOR under Wine. It all works reasonably well, with the exception of sound. I either get full glorious sound, or no sound at all. At first I thought it might relate to me alt-tabbing to something else while the game is loading, but after trying to reproduce it, it seems entirely unpredictable. So for me at least, Linux audio doesn't work just fine.
That might be because of HD Audio instead of AC97. I recently built a new desktop PC with a new case, and installed the latest Realtek drivers from their website (instead of the version from the Asus mainboard cd). I then experienced the behaviour you described - whenever I plug in my headphones, the sound from the speakers stops. Infuriating. I want to turn the speakers on and off when I do not want to use them, but now I manually have to unplug the headphones as well? Yeah, I twiddled with older Realtek drivers etc., until I found out that it is a "feature" of the HD Audio extension boards. Great, I thought, just install the AC97 board for the case... except I cannot find it anymore, a month after building the machine. I know I saw it somewhere in the boxes... ;) But seriously, check that out.
Yama is the Hindu god of death. I see a BSoD joke here somewhere :)
Flash still seems to use ALSA directly instead of PulseAudio. It was a lot easier to simply replace it with Gnash than to change the config.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
This troll is still relevant, since it provoked kneejerk replies from people taking it seriously and trying to refute its arguments, even though it is painfully obvious it's just a troll. Good work, thanks for the laughs. :)
And what are you doing here reading Slashdot?
When I go to a funeral, I go there to visit the living. Not the dead. If you really cared that much about the person you'd visit or communicate with him while he was alive. Otherwise what sort of caring is that?
The fact is pulseaudio still doesn't work well.
(I have tried it relatively recently in fedora).
I use envy24 it works absolutely flawlessly in both FreeBSD and Windows without any silly layers of abstraction.
(This is just for Music Listening). The card has crystals for all the sample rates so it shouldn't need any resampling ever.
If you can find a version of Alsa where they haven't broken it (Seems to happen all the time) and it works correct at 44.1khz
then you can use jackd and it will work fine.
The Alsa / Pulseaudio people might be good at hacking / getting devices to just about work but they know nothing about audio.
(The jackd people do).
Honestly, at this stage, UnXiS should stop pretending that any of its SCO Unixes - OSE, ODT, UnixWare, Monterrey, et al have any value, and just open them up under GPLv3.
Hopefully they fix suspend and hibernation (doesn't work on my core2). Goes into PM just fine, just won't ever come out.
"Linux has some neat features, but there's a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the community about its legal future."
Gee. How much do you make by CTRL-c CTRL-v ing Microsoft's propaganda? At least take the time to change the text a little bit.
Jack detection can be done in many ways, and different vendor have their own way of doing so, unless somebody get a hardware specification set for your sound card, I don't think it will be easy to fix.
And yeah, it is a driver problem.
alsamixer -c0 should let you config the first sound card of your computer, not PulseAudio switches. Note that sometimes you might have two hardware sound cards or more, in that case choose the correct one in alsamixer.
Regarding to system wide daemon, I have never used PulseAudio that way so I can't say anything, but running a sound server as root doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
There is no need for low-latency at all for lip sync, you only need precise knowledge of the latency.
Of course pulseaudio regularly has bugs that cause it to be off more than 10 ms, so it doesn't work for that really. But that's just a bug, precise latency measurements don't even need to cost you anything in power usage (trivially if the audio hardware is somewhat sane, if not it gets more difficult but is still possible).
nice posting..
go go LINUX..
Steve....is that you Steve Ballmer?
What is it with McBride and his companies having shitty websites. The SCO site had long looked like it was designed by time travelers from the late 90s, and his new company Me Inc. has a site so amateurish one would assume it's some kind in mom's basement, busy churning out fart apps for smartphones. As well as broken images, they can't even scale images so they don't appear freakish. It's full of vague sounding claims and figures pointing out who the mobile market is booming.
http://www.meinc.biz/MeIncDepot/consumers.aspx
I look forward to SCO's eventual victory and the glorious reinstatement of McBride as CEO. A man of McBride's talents would surely not be pissing around with this pointless little company if he were not planning something. McBride, pull yourself up by the magical underpants and get back in the fight!
I am willing to downgrade to 11.04 to try it. Spent an entire day putting 12.04 on it because it's an old laptop without PAE. Then spent a weekend fighting with Subsonic/Java/PulseAudio, which was the whole point of the effort. Disgusted, have been ignoring it for weeks.
It's a common FUD. Nowaday Linux audio works just fine
Well, sometimes getting audio to work is beyond the control of the Linux kernel. If the system has integrated audio on the motherboard (e.g. a laptop) the ACPI DSDT (Differentiated System Description Table) supplied by the manufacturer in the ROM can instruct the hardware to behave differently under different operating systems, or provide different descriptions of the hardware (e.g. audio inputs and outputs) to different operating systems. That's why it's common to have little glitches in Linux audio, like not having the right mixer controls.
The DSDT is written in a language called ACPI Source Language (ASL). Intel and Microsoft both provide compilers for ASL, but the MS compiler accepts buggy, non-compliant DSDTs. Since for some vendors (Toshiba) the job is considered done when stuff works under the current version of windows, they ship their laptops with DSDTs that won't work under anything but Windows and might not work in future versions of Windows.
Since the kernel writers have no way of knowing what specific hardware is in your machine except what your machine tells the kernel, they can't fix this. It's entirely the manufacturer's fault, although users blame Linux because everything works in Windows. Getting stuff working isn't exactly a nightmare, but it's beyond most users' capability. You extract the DSDT from ROM, decompile it, fix the bugy ASL, compile it, then put the fixed DSDT in your initramfs (remembering to do this again every time you install a new kernel). Sometimes using a linux boot parameter to masquerade as Windows to the hardware works.
So to recap: the Linux audio system may be fine, the hardware drivers may be fine, but if the manufacturer fails to supply a correct description of what the hardware contains to the Linux kernel, audio might not work.
Disclaimer -- this information is a few years out of date, as I've stopped using Toshiba laptops and use Asus instead. However I'm fairly sure it still exists with certain manufacturer's laptops, which have worked flawlessly for me under Linux.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
How many hit records do they have?
You are welcome on my lawn.
And: Everything. Just. Worked. Always. Hardware settings (back when sound cards still had configurable analog sections(!)) were deterministic and reliable, and getting excellent sound from *random_app* was a foregone conclusion.
Oh yeah, the OSS driver just worked. That is, unless you had more than a single program that wanted to output audio. There was a reason why we had ESD / aRts / etc at the time being. I'm glad we have ALSA now (PulseAudio I loathe, JACK is useful if you really need low latency, most users will not).
OSS is nowhere near defunct and is still under active development. It is superior in every way to the complete and utter crap known as Pulseaudio. Ever taken a look at how PA is designed? It is layer upon complicated layer upon another complicated layer. It's design is completely insane. I *still* in 2012 get kernel oops'es because of PA (looking at /var/log/syslog right now on my Ubuntu 12.04 box and I see tons of entries relating to PA failures).
I agree. Pulseaudio is the biggest scam pulled on Linux users in the last decade. It is incompetently written and horridly designed. We are stuck with it, though, because the distro maintainers, in their infinite wisdom, have become convinced it is the answer.
For some reason they have totally failed to look at OSSv4 and how superior it is. Indeed, OSSv4 can directly replace BOTH Alsa and PA. It is much more sanely written, has better audio quality, and has never crashed my audio. PA crashes my audio daily. the problem is most distros are making it near impossible to remove PA. In the past I could remove it and just compile and install OSS. My audio problems were always solved. Now if I try to remove PA, I have to take most of the OS with it.
OSSv4 is not closed source, is still under active development and is superior in *every* way to ALSA/PA. Try it sometime. All of your sound issues will magically disappear.
If Apple wants to get into farming, they can make a wild iBeest!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
So OSS4 has been available under GPL terms for some time now. Why don't the kernel folks give it another look?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Let's just say it mostly works...
Pulseaudio is just a workaround to many problems that still plague linux audio. Not trying to belittle the development effort, but I do believe that in some ways the effort has been to work around the problems instead of addressing them.
And OSS (at least v4) is not obsolete, it is indeed in many ways superior to ALSA. For example it has per-application volume control, something ALSA relies on Pulseaudio to provide. This article - http://insanecoding.blogspot.pt/2009/06/state-of-sound-in-linux-not-so-sorry.html - although somewhat dated explains it very well. OSS v4 just lacks (mainly) a broad distro support... :(
Much fun was had, for instance, with "cat /dev/audio > /dev/st0" to dump a radio show (reliably! without problems! in the plain-and-simple way that Unix is supposed to be!) to DDS tape.
Well I don't remember having a tape drive plugged in, but I also recall the late 90s. cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp to check my headphones were working etc.
However sound was an issue. If I recall correctly, you couldn't have two applications opening the sound at the same time for instance.
Sound went through a ropey couple of years with different programs all attempting to use the hardware in different ways, but I haven't personally had any problems for over 5 years.
One huge benefit of using x86_64 for everything is that it is now the only desktop platform you need to support. Mobile apps are on ARM, but desktops are all x86_64. Having a common binary format that works on every machine saves a lot of work for developers and should allow Linux finally get some good commercial software.
Using x32 is simply not worthwhile. Maybe there are a few programs out there that will benefit, but I have not seen a single one mentioned or any benchmarks listed. People just assume that using larger pointers will make a program slower, even though today's programs are so bloated, any increase in size would be an insignificant drop in an ocean. Put up benchmarks, or use x86_64!
The recently released (11th May 2011) Pulseaudio 2.0 lists improved jack detection as one of its features so you will probably be waiting longer for a fix to show up in a non-rolling distro...
pfft, your sound will magically disappear, yes
For things that don't require low latency, and have issue with a callback interface that wants specific numbers of samples etc, what is stopping them just making a small fifo buffer to emulate the behaviour they are doing now with pulse? Just feed jack from the buffer.
The developer of pulseaudio admitted it was made for low power consumption, a few ease of use things were mentioned, but they were for the user not developers (and all of which weren't really a problem with jack by then anyway, like hot plugging etc)
aside from the extra resource consumption (there is no need to run low latency if you don't want to) Jack handles any case pulse can, and then some.
If you're trying to write portable code, fsync() is absolutely necessary. If you don't fsync(), there is no way to enforce that the data *ever* gets written to the disk platter--it could be sitting in a cache somewhere.
Sure, most implementations will flush it out to disk in a reasonable amount of time, but that behaviour isn't guaranteed anywhere.
The reason firefox calls fsync() a lot is so that if you have a power outage on a desktop machine you can boot back up and it'll open up with the same set of tabs you had at the time of the outage.
Just an interesting note, but not meant to be read as "Windows is better".
Starting with Vista's new audio stack, Microsoft created a new standard for audio devices to work with the OS. Effectively lets the OS just work with buffers. Jack-detection and lots of other fun features automatically work with the generic Windows audio drivers. It's like AHCI, but for sound devices.
I wonder if this is documented anywhere and if opensource can tap into this for OS devel.
I haven't had to use 3rd party audio drivers on any Vista/Win7 badged computer. The only time you really need 3rd party drivers is for cards like the Asus Xonar that have an integrated amp, for which the generic audio drivers have no interface to manage. Technically, that like of stuff can be manged side-channel and still use the generic audio drivers.
This is not a negative post, just curiosity.
What do you classify as "Low latency" for audio(in milliseconds)? I know Window's audio stack has a "normal" and "low latency" mode, where the low latency mode application gets exclusive access to the sound device. Even "normal mode", which is higher latency, seems instantaneous for my perception, but I could easily understand how millisecond difference can alter wave interaction from sound inputs.
From what I can find, Vista/7 have a normal mode of ~10ms latency and an exclusive mode of 1-5ms(depending on hardware and CPU load) latency. Human perception has a max threshold of ~4-6ms before two audio-streams sound synced with no tone coloring, and an action is considered synced with a sound around 30-50ms(depending on the person).
10ms is well below the 30-50ms required for desktop use.
Currently the biggest cpu caches are something like 32MB. On-die memory is *expensive*, so 8GB will take a while.
While most of the kernel is written in C, there are portions of each architecture that are written in assembly. Generally it's the very low-level stuff dealing with system startup, exception vectors, etc. It's also used in creating the low level synchronization primitives (locks, barriers, etc.) that are used by the C code to ensure that access to data is synchronized by the various parts of the system. Lastly, it's used in certain performance-sensitive code.
FUD, fear uncertainty and doubt. You sure you really want to label a problem that many of us experienced as FUD? We've always been at war with eastasia! The zealotry is strong with this one folks.
and OSS is still going on strong, has all the features that pulse audio adds such as per program sound levels etc.. http://www.opensound.com/
Pulse is just yet another sound server in a long line of failed sound servers. It'll be just another failure to the list later on once people get bored with this sound system too.
Yes I can.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
If the measure of a troll is how seriously people take it, GP's doing very well...
"First, they fight you, ..." :-)
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
I have been using Linux since 1.13.XX. I started with it because MS Windows forced me into it with their lax security and it's proprietary regime.
But I'm telling you what no one wants to say. Linux, using a GUI is as bad as Windows 3.0 ever was. The software for it has become bloated and as for saying you have a choice, it is now choose between bloated, unfriendly, all desktop managers look the same (unless you have the ka-ho-nas to rum WM/ with very limited acceptability) and why in the world are there so many Debian off-shoots, that are all the same in that they fall short of something new, usable in the real world, and throw in the trashcan the current KDE/Gnome crap?
I am just so disappointed with the state of Linux and have actually found MS Windows98 (can you believe it) to be a better choice.
So there is a new Linux? I really don't care. Do you?
Perhaps I read this wrong, but the complaint sounds a lot like Linux developers are treating the DSDT like Microsoft developers treated HTML circa IE6. i.e.: It was coming from broken sources and the best option is to throw your hands up in the air and forego any attempt at sanely handling the results in a way consistent with expectations.
Well, that's wrong. I mean, yes, it's bad that Microsoft might have gotten everyone into the situation and we should shame them, and it would be nice if a standards body came along to force them and OEMs to be consistent here... But that is an ought, not an is.
So why is it so totally impossible to implement quirks parsing in the DSDT to emulate Windows behavior? What makes it so difficult that I have read only posts complaining about ACPI DSDTs produced by bad Microsoft software, and no posts about simply dealing with the situation for the benefit of end users?
Arch Linux uses ALSA as a default if you follow the basic install docs. :)
I don't think I had any PulseAudio problems since Ubuntu 10.04, but I just want sound to work and that is what ALSA is giving me right now.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Wait, gstreamer is obsolete?
I thought just yesterday it was the new hotness.
It was supposed to be the new a/v system that Ubuntu was building itself around.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Sarcasm detection FAIL
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Meh. That was a failure of sarcasm-insertion. :)
Kid-proof tablet..
Shaitand
First, what does Exchange have to do with audio?
Secondly, what are you looking for? A replacement for the Exchange Server? Sorry, probably not happening. If you HAVE a need for Exchange, you buy Exchange, right?
But, you mentioned "business desktop". Why not go with Evolution, then? Talks with Exchange, does mail, calendar, notes and contacts. What more would you need? The only thing "missing" is the ability to change your Windows Domain Password. So, just use an RDP client (Remmina would be one choice) to log in to a Windows Server in that Domain. For instance, try to log in to the Exchange Server. Of course you (probably) because you would have to be an administrator, but the ATTEMPT will allow you to update your password.
Mail - check
Notes - check
Calendar - check
Contacts - check
Password Change - check
RDP - check
Now, Evolution is (in my opinion), far better than the Windows Exchange client. Talks to more server types, allows a choice of spam control, better signatures, threads both Microsoft and Unix emails, and more.
So try it -- if it works for you, problem solved, right?
(I was forced to use Windows Exchange client a few years ago. I was shocked that emails weren't threaded! But, I think this has been sorted recently -- just not compatibly).
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Booya! AC troll done got trolled the fuck out by the masta! Trooooleeegrove!
His dick doesn't work anymore, but Linux always works for Trollgrove. So, while you're pounding da pussy, he's cranking out the most powerful FUD-busting posts that troll so hard you will wish you had stayed on dial-up.
Trollgrove, represent!
Trollin' Trollin' Trollin'
Keep postin', postin', postin',
Though they're disapprovin',
Keep them zealots fapin' Trollgrove!
Don't try to understand 'em,
Just grab and bend and fuck 'em,
YEAHahaha!
Troll em' long and troll em' hard, Trollgrove! Suck that FOSS dick and swallow the sweet taste of freedom, yeah!!!!
What do you classify as "Low latency" for audio(in milliseconds)?
I tend to run about 4 or 8 msec with jack, this is with a multitude of programs being able to use it unlike windows. Some people run lower (you can set it as low as you want.. if your hardware can take it is another matter) but there isn't much need and I think pcie bus latency + other factors might start to kick in.
The best windows setups I've seen still tend to hit around 10-12msec with it more typically being 20-30. Although here seems to say 3 might be possible with asio, with 11-12 being more typical minimum. Mac systems I've seen never tend to go below 6, which is fine.
I re-read it five times after reading your reply. I wanted to see titties :(
Why should he be banned for making a joke? Should you be banned for not laughing at it, then?
I am not devoid of humor.
And then they send you goatse, if Slashdot's any indication...
Sorry, but there's only one version of redHat, and that's RedHat Linux. the other names you mention, are completely different versions of Linux, and have nothing to do with eachother nor redHat apart from using the same(ish) kernel (Same as in major variable being the version number)
Anyone can view the sourcecode of Linux. That's the whole point of "OPEN source"
RedHat doesn't make Linux. Linus Torvalds makes Linux, He decides what goes into Linux and what doesn't, officially.
The Command Line should never be killed. It's part of the reason why Linux is so good, because people who wants to KNOW their computer and their OS, can get down and dirty with the commandline. Besides, BASH isn't a dirty $5 hooker, BASH is a $100.000 glamour escort.
Of course Linux needs games. "We" have been saying that for years. But that's not RedHats' fault, that's the producers of the games' fault (Blizzard, EA, Atari, etc) And we don't need microcrap office. We've got LibreOffice. Does the job just fine.
If the measure of a troll is how seriously people take it, GP's doing very well...
"First, they fight you, ..." :-)
And then they send you goatse, if Slashdot's any indication...
Beats 4chan. /.'s an aquired taste. There's no requirement to take any of it seriously. Where else can you find this many nutbars all in the same place? Computer !@#$, then philosophy, then history, then Aussies (or Russians or Chinese or Latvians, ...), then particle physics, then DHS/ICE/TSA crap, then MafiAA, ... My worst nightmares aren't as entertaining as you people are (and I have great nightmares :-).
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Start Pulseaudio? Never even heard of that. On windows I just chose the recording source Stereo Mix. Why does linux make it difficult?
You're a dumb nigger. You do know that right?
Sounds like....hehehe... pun... Sounds like your *nix setups have a more consistent latency. Thanks for the response. It's hard to find info on the topic without delving into pro discussions that go over my head or make certain assumptions about their audience.
yes but it still doesn't offer anything to speed up productivity....
Ah, a proper troll. It's been so long since I saw one I have tears in my eyes beholding the beauty of it. They're nearly extinct you know, rarely see them in the wild. I personally think this one should be entered into a breeding program, look at it's beautiful plumage!
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Please read more on Linux. You are one of the newbies who imagines that Red Hat IS Linux. It is only one distro of many. They do not control Debian or Ubuntu nor Mandriva nor much of anything but Redhat.
Also, Bash is not DOS. And, Linux experts use the command line to great advantage, though it is not mandatory for newbies.
You can run Office on Linux, using WINE or Crossover. Ditto for Internet Explorer. Not sure why anyone would want to run IE, but if you want, you can do it.
There is so much wrong with your posting, I must wonder if it is satirical. If you are serious you need to learn a lot fast.
So far after years of litigation, those statements about Red Hat stealing much of Linux from SCO have been ruled untrue. I know of no expert who expects SCO to win a crushing defeat any day now. The only FUD in Linux is in your posting, dude.
I use Linux daily. Fine system except for pulseaudio. Are there any full-featured desktop distros that don't depend on that terrible sound server? Can someone with weak linux fu (me) recompile gnome and all the apps to go back to ALSA?
GNOME and GNOME apps depend on PulseAudio.
In KDE land PulseAudio is optional thanks to the Phonon playback stack and multiple possible back-ends. I use Plasma Desktop, Phonon-VLC, and pure ALSA. I have no sound problems at all.