Project Stick In The Mud :-)

[Arthur Pemberton]

On Sat, Aug 9, 2008 at 9:48 PM, Tom Horsley <tom.horsley at att.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Aug 2008 20:02:10 -0500
> "Arthur Pemberton" <pemboa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Seems like PulseAudio is the way forward towards reducing the myriad
>> of "other ways". What problem do you have with it besides that it is
>> new?
>
> As near as I can tell, they have reduced the myriad of other ways to
> the point that all you can do is stereo output to your primary speakers.
> If there is a way to get it to send the digital audio track from
> a DVD to the SP/DIF output on my motherboard, I haven't been able
> to detect it (which brings up another point - why do all "improvements"
> always come with absolutely no documentation :-).

I would like to believe this is a bug that will be fixed (have you checked?).
I hadn't noticed this myself.

> With alsa, it only took six weeks of searching to find the utterly
> cryptic way to get SP/DIF working:
>
> amixer set IEC958 unmute
> amixer set 'IEC958 Playback AC97-SPSA' 0
> amixer set 'IEC958 Playback Source' PCM
> mplayer dvd://1 -alang en -ao alsa:device=hw=0.0 -ac hwdts,hwac3,
>
> So at least it is possible to do in alsa (though, of course, if
> I have a different audio device, I need different cryptic gibberish).

One would hope that PulseAudio will soon make this easy.

> In fact I've been detecting a disturbing trend in all the latest
> "improvements" - useful things that once worked, keep disappearing:

I agree with you here, just didn't fully agree with this one example
of PulseAudio. I consider this (and this may be a bit flamebait) the
"Gnome effect".

> improved GDM doesn't have any way to change the default X server
> options, so you can't remove -nolisten tcp or add -dpi 96

Haven't noticed this as I don't use GDM.

> improved X server now always gets all its information from EDID (after
> ignoring it for the first 20 years), so now you can't override the
> screen size to change the default DPI or provide a mode line to run
> slightly less than 60HZ, etc.

I despise this to the core. I was starting to believe that I am the
only one suffering from this. I am all with you for filling a bug
against this.

> improved evdev X input system can't do draglock, thus making trackballs
> impossible to use without three hands (fortunately I can still disable
> evdev and go back to old crappy input system where draglock does work).

Haven't come across this myself.

> improved NetworkManager won't run the same dhclient hook scripts
> or start early enough that you can have a functioning network when
> servers need one (fortunately you can disable NetworkManager and
> enable network and get back to the old crappy technique where things
> just work right :-).

Here, I think a compromise is necessary. If you're running a server, I
think you're competent enough to turn of NetworkManager (it was really
crappy a few versions ago). While I think there needs to be away to
have a network connection on boot, that seems, even to me, to be low
priority.

> If many more things get improved the same way, it will be almost
> as big an improvement as vista is over xp :-).

Ugh. I would hate that. The least one can do is file bugs however. We
shouldn't just assume that the devs don't care. Some of the
"simplifications" however really make things more difficult.


-- 
Fedora 7 : sipping some of that moonshine
( www.pembo13.com )