Hi, How the hell is sound going to work in Etch under GNOME?
1/ Current status At the lowest level: ------------------- Sarge was bound to supporting OSS officially (in its kernels), and had optional ALSA packages for 2.4 or optional 2.6 kernels with ALSA support. ALSA will be the standard in Etch. In GNOME: -------- Right now, esound is pulled in by gnome-desktop-environment, but isn't started by default. esound is known to be buggy, and I'm happy with the conservative choice of not enabling it as it permits applications using OSS or ALSA to just work. Some GNOME apps rely on GStreamer (Totem, Rhythmbox, Sound-Juicer) audio-output, others on esound, some even have ALSA and/or OSS plugins. In GStreamer: ------------ GStreamer ships schema files which have the default audiosink set to OSS, new users will have their audiosink set to this. GStreamer applications outputting sound use a "gstreamer0.8-osssink | gstreamer0.8-audiosink" dependency. Future GStreamer releases might offer an autoaudiosink using whatever seems appropriate at run time (no configuration needed): esound if available, artsd if available, etc. 2/ Proposed plan OSS should be supported, but the default is ALSA in the lower layers, and that should be reflected in the upper layers, that means that I propose: - shipping GStreamer with default audiosink alsasink, a NEWS.Debian inviting to change the current audiosink of existing users to alsasink if possible (this can be done via gconf-tool or via GNOME preferences) - requesting all GStreamer apps outputting sound to depend on "gstreamer0.8-alsasink | gstreamer0.8-audiosink" (Rhythmbox, Amarok, Totem, Sound-Juicer, ...) eventually with a NEWS.Debian suggesting the installation of gstreamer0.8-alsa - (the current configuration where esound is not started is fine) What do *you* think? I'd like some input from people using non-OSS/ALSA/esound audiosinks, eventually from people not using GNOME, so I might post this as a more general question. In particular, I'm interested in knowing if any particular configuration changes are needed, and what packages need to be changed. Right now, this seems feasible in the GNOME + GStreamer world separately from the rest of the distribution, if you see any reason why the transition should happen all at once, I'm interested in bringing this up to debian-devel. Bye, -- Loïc Minier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
