Audio: January 2010 Archives

My feelings for Ubuntu have run hot and cold since I first discovered the "Linux for human beings"-nicknamed reimagination of Debian during the Dapper (6.06) era.

I've had Ubuntu be the best distro on a given computer, sometimes it won't even boot, I've had terrible trouble with Intel video, and upgrade-delivered changes have forced me to rewrite scripts on the fly. OK, it's mostly Intel video, which for any user of Xorg over the past 2+ years has been an absolute nightmare.

And lately I've thrown another wrinkle into the mix: I fixed my Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 (circa 2001) laptop's dead sound with a sub-$3 USB Headphone Set sound module from DealExtreme.com. In Debian Lenny I managed to configure it to play all sounds except system sounds and Flash sound. That means audio and video files will play, but the system beeps and bleeps and any sound from Flash video or audio can't be heard. I can even record via the USB sound module I got for a couple bucks and change (shipping included).

I've been using Debian Lenny for the last few weeks, ever since my other Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 running Ubuntu Karmic developed an eventually fatal crack in its LCD screen. I had the other "backup" laptop set up to test fully encrypted LVM in Debian Lenny, and I pretty much had everything configured, so I took my Ubuntu backups and rolled my files into the Debian laptop, where I've been ever since.

The constant X issues I had during my time with Ubuntu Karmic didn't exactly endear me to the distro at that point. I know the problems are most likely upstream with either Xorg, the Intel driver or the Linux kernel itself, but the average user like myself can be totally thrown by the seemingly constant breakage.

Anyhow, nothing lasts forever in the world of operating-system software, especially the free, open-source variety, so I'm on the lookout for where I want to go with the hardware I have now as the year wears on.

To take a peek at the near-future of Debian, particularly the Squeeze testing branch, I chose to run the live DVD of Sidux 2009-04.

In anticipation of the next version of Ubuntu, which will be an LTS (long-term support) release that will get three years of support on the desktop (and five years on the server) when it is officially released in April of this year, I downloaded a DVD image of Ubuntu Lucid Alpha 2.

Why DVD? My Toshiba's DVD/CD-ROM drive neither burns discs nor likes to properly read CD-Rs burned just about anywhere. It has no problem with traditional CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs. And curiously it also has no trouble booting from and running distros burned to DVD+R discs, so unless I get a CD directly from Ubuntu, or use a commercially made OpenBSD disc, I pretty much have to use DVD images that I burn on other computers (remember — this laptop doesn't have a burner).

So I burned the Ubuntu Lucid Alpha 2 DVD image and booted the Toshiba Satellite 1100 on it.

At first X died. I tried "safe graphics mode," which worked. I was soon in the usual orange/brown world of Ubuntu. A look at /etc/X11/xorg.conf revealed that I was running the VESA driver. I've known for a long time that VESA can get many a troubled PC to run X, but I've rarely had to resort to it in order to make things work on my particular PCs.

Well, now I guess my Intel 82830 CGC (aka Intel 830m) chip needs VESA to work with the current Xorg. That would've been good to know over the past few months.

But now I do know, and I not only booted Ubuntu Lucid but also Sidux 2009-04 using this information.

Now on to Ubuntu Lucid: I quickly configured the system to use my USB Headphone Set sound module, and I was pleased to, for the first time since I got the $2-and-change USB sound card, actually have system sounds and sound in Flash.

Yep, everything works. As in the past, when Ubuntu works, it works well. It recognizes lots of hardware, plays multimedia without a lot of jumping through hoops ...

I was able to get into the newish NetworkManager applet and tweak the network settings to suit the quirks of my own networking situation. Firefox 3.5 ran great. And even in the live environment I found the GNOME-based Ubuntu very responsive.

I wrote plenty about the value to users of long-term-support releases in Ubuntu, Debian (where every release is an LTS), Red Hat/CentOS (ditto the LTS philosophy) and even FreeBSD and NetBSD, which don't send those like myself into a flurry of configuration nightmares every six months ... or more often as in the case of Ubuntu Karmic, where Xorg and kernel updates continually broke and fixed my system in a seemingly random fashion.

Anyhow, with the VESA driver I was able to successfully boot and run Ubuntu Lucid Alpha 2, I had none of the X issues that plagued my system in recent years, sound worked great, Flash ran well, and the desktop, which looks pretty much like it does in Karmic, offers plenty of functionality.

"Everything works" is what I want. And thus far, except for a potentially ominous failure of the system to recognize the mouse buttons (it happened during my first Ubuntu Lucid session but not at all during the second), the near future of Linux is going swimmingly for my aging Toshiba Satellite laptop.

Curious aside: Having sound work in Flash with my USB Headphone Set sound module was a major "breakthrough." After I quit out of Ubuntu Lucid the first time, I booted into Debian Lenny, where I still had the ability to hear sound in Flash. However, after today's Ubuntu session, I again booted into Debian Lenny and didn't have sound in Flash anymore. Another Linux mystery.

But once again (and after much Ubuntu bashing on my part as the transition from Hardy to Karmic caused me untold — OK, mostly told — grief), Ubuntu appears to be the OS with the best fit for my current hardware.

I'll miss the speed of Debian (it's that much faster than Ubuntu, I've found), and I may indeed give Squeeze a tryout in the future, but I'll be keeping my eye on Ubuntu Lucid as it wends its way toward release in three months.

If I know what's good for me (and clearly that's not often the case), I'll wait a month or three after Lucid's April release, then roll it onto one of the Toshibas and see how well everything works at that point.

All I know is the prospect of two to three years of "stability" is something I would welcome at this point in my computing life, where I'm using free, open-source operating systems and applications to get increasing amounts of work done and just don't have the time to continually fix update-delivered breakage or get new hardware that is presumably more in the minds of developers and potentially is better served by "today's" software.

Unlike previous Ubuntu released based on (I think ...) a snapshot of Debian Sid, Ubuntu Lucid, an LTS release, is supposedly being pulled from Debian Testing (currently Squeeze), making for greater stability out of the box. I'll take it.

Ubuntu Lucid isn't even in the beta stage, let alone a release-candidate or fully baked release, and on my hardware it's looking very, very good. I'm no fan of free-software hyperbole, but Ubuntu Lucid really does look like the best Ubuntu LTS release ever, and I'm anxious to see it at release time in April.