--- civileme <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [...] > First, the linux kernel isn't really designed for > sound. It does not > use a very high bandwidth for sound events. Next, > the sound drivers are > fragmented and in disarray. I have helped numerous > individuals who > somehow managed to be running both ALSA and OSS at > the same time. > (Thing is, XMMS will still sort-of cooperate so > they think it is a > driver error or some weird intermittent.) Anyway, > neither OSS nor ALSA > support all of them, and sometimes the dodges to > install sound properly > require a few incantations and a bit of voodoo. [...]
This is a MAJOR linux problem then, that needs fixing. It cannot (I reiterate, it CANNOT) make it on as a desktop system with broken sound. Games, MP3s, multimedia all absolutely require sound and these are some of the major things expected to work properly on a desktop system. It isn't even debatable. Sound MUST work/be made to work properly. Perhaps one thing that could be done is to make artsd fully friendly. Instead of sometimes needing to do an "artsdsp <command>" to get sound, that should be the normal and automatic that artsd works - any app not a kde app automatically goes through artsdsp. Artsd is really not very friendly with the codeweavers crossover plugin, for instance, and that little creation is a BIG winner app. OSS sucks, frankly, since if anything more than two apps want to produce a sound, it croaks (Alsa handles this correctly when alsa works). Sound needs fixing. [...] > Praedor, I saw an earlier post from you criticizing > OpenOffice, but I > see an error in your logic. > > You impute a motive of making a faster load then > criticize the package > on that basis. This might follow if such a motive > existed, but it does > not, at least not as a primary motive. The first > reason to split the [...] Well, OK, but I must say that if Sun releases StarOffice 6.0 and it is anywhere near as horrifically slow and plodding as is OpenOffice641, then it will not go anywhere. My experience recently with OpenOffice641 was that not only was swriter slow, but every single other app was slooooow. And switching from one app window to the next was slooow. It was like I was trying to run Linux and KDE on a 64 MB system with a pentium chip. It is fine to fix bugs and then worry about speed but unless the speed will come quickly after the bug fixes, then I cannot see a viable StarOffice 6.0 coming out anytime in the near future. ..and OpenOffice will not be ahead of StarOffice in this regard so if StarOffice will be having speed/usability problems, so will OpenOffice. The speed issue didn't correct even after the app was up and running. It remained slow, period. Hence, I reinstalled 5.2 and given that it starts up initially very slowly, once up all the apps become pretty responsive. I have used KOffice now and again but I can't trust it not to crash at inopportune moments and Kchart really is horrible - and I need something like kchart + kspread to graph data. About the only thing I can say about the Koffice suite in THIS regard is that kchart is well ahead of the gnumeric equivalent, though the actual spreadsheet apps are roughly equivalent in functionality. When/if the day arrives that the koffice suite can do what StarOffice can do then I will dump StarOffice (and hopefully koffice will do more...LIKE CITATIONS!!! WHO CAN WRITE A RESEARCH PAPER WITHOUT CITATIONS?! - It is INSANE to enter them by hand! Only Lyx can do this right but no one seems to give a damn so I assume everyone is using these suites for nothing more than writing letters to grandma or something equally simple). I've looked with interest at Hancom and a few other similar apps (Gobe is another that is on the way). They may be nice for lightweight wordprocessing/spreadsheets but none of them will handle hardcore, major league research papers THAT REQUIRE CITATIONS. Word CAN handle this, as can WordPerfect, on Macs and Windoze when used in combination with EndNote. They have the functionality, we don't (except for Lyx - and if you haven't ever used Lyx, it is difficult to get used to, difficult to use without learning a programming language - for all practical purposes: latex) and it isn't planned for any linux wordprocessor either. praedor __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Try FREE Yahoo! Mail - the world's greatest free email! http://mail.yahoo.com/
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