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Running Slack 12 (close to vanilla install) and using KDE for my
desktop**.

I installed Skype beta 2.0.0.27 from linuxpackages.net, and when I call
the Echo/Sound Test Service I get "Call Failed: Problem with audio
playback".

Now, here's the thing: if I use a different window manager, such as
Blackbox, it works fine. Obviously it is neither hardware nor ALSA
libraries causing the problem.

So, the question is, how should the audio setup in KDE be configured to
make it work? I seem to have tried everything obvious in the KDE control
panel for sound system, but I'm hoping someone here will tell me what
works for them.

Your responses, abuse, flames, and exhortations to RTFM, STFW, STFU, and
FOAD are all appreciated. Actual help even more so.

Mark

** Yes, I know that real Slackers run ODE, but I'm a softie who knows
nothing at all about computing. Please forgive me, even though I am,
remain, and always will be, unworthy.
--
Signature eagerly awaits ode, the reduced fat version of ODE.

On Sun, 03 Feb 2008 15:08:14 +0000, Tom Newton wrote:

> On 2008-02-03, Mark South <mark.south@null.invalid> wrote:
>> On Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:58:55 +0000, Tom Newton wrote:
>>
>>> So tell us this: If skype works fine with blackbox, then what the hell
>>> are you complaining about?
>>
>> No complaints here. I was asking a question. I'd like to understand
>> in slightly better detail what the difference between the two setups
>> is.
>
> I know. I was just using your post as an excuse to rant.

You are developing a reputation in that direction.

> I think you know that too.

:-)

>>> Why are you knocking yourself out to make it work with KDE?
>>
>> I actually like KDE. I like Gnome too. I like Xfce, Enlightenment,
>> WindowMaker, Fluxbox, Blackbox, Openbox, fvwm, and twm. I even quite
>> like jwm, god help me.
>>
> Once again, you are talking apples and oranges above. A window manager
> and an integrated desktop environment like KDE or Gnome, are very
> different beasts.

Some say so. I believe it to be a matter of degree. There is a
spectrum, and some window managers come close to providing desktop
environments (Enlightenment, Windowmaker) and some have configuration to
make it possible, like fvwm-crystal.

> KDE/Gnome _have_ window managers. They are not window managers.

Yup. It's a layered stack.

> I am using a great window manager right now, called ratpoison. It's just
> about infinitely configurable.
>
> It's 112K with no special libs. Compare that to the size of KDE or Gnome
> and all the special libs they need...
>
> We are talking orders of magnitude of size difference and functional
> difference.

Indeed. And I prefer a bicycle as a means of getting about, but
sometimes a train is more practical.

>> But any of them should be capable of working correctly, and so I asked
>> because I am obviously missing exactly how to ensure that KDE works
>> with Skype. I'm sure that, reading this group, there are many who have
>> this setup working.
>>
>>> Afraid they'll take your computer away for failing to use the
>>> Korporate Desktop Environment?
>>
>> They're more likely to take it away for not using that OS from the top
>> left corner of the US called (*expletive deleted*).
>
> :-)
>
> But KDE/Gnome are clones of the Windows user-interface. By going down
> that path you are protecting yourself from them by doing what they want:
> Becoming more like them.

It's like alcohol. I can take it or let it alone.

> That makes no sense.
>
> KDE/Gnome are all free and open source now, but they won't be for long.
> And once the patents are all secured in the corrupt,
> corporate-controlled courts, Linux is a thing of the past.

Not over this side of the water, here it's going the other direction.

On 2008-02-03, Mark South <mark.south@null.invalid> wrote:
>>>

....

>> Once again, you are talking apples and oranges above. A window manager
>> and an integrated desktop environment like KDE or Gnome, are very
>> different beasts.
>
> Some say so. I believe it to be a matter of degree. There is a
> spectrum, and some window managers come close to providing desktop
> environments (Enlightenment, Windowmaker) and some have configuration to
> make it possible, like fvwm-crystal.

It's not as simple as 'degree'. A window manager is a utility.

An integrated desktop environment is a user-interface that conceals
the way you OS really works.

>> KDE/Gnome _have_ window managers. They are not window managers.
>
> Yup. It's a layered stack.
>
>> I am using a great window manager right now, called ratpoison. It's just
>> about infinitely configurable.
>>
>> It's 112K with no special libs. Compare that to the size of KDE or Gnome
>> and all the special libs they need...
>>
>> We are talking orders of magnitude of size difference and functional
>> difference.
>
> Indeed. And I prefer a bicycle as a means of getting about, but
> sometimes a train is more practical.

That's not an accurate analogy. You can't do anything with KDE that
others can't do with ODE.

>>> But any of them should be capable of working correctly, and so I asked
>>> because I am obviously missing exactly how to ensure that KDE works
>>> with Skype. I'm sure that, reading this group, there are many who have
>>> this setup working.
>>>
>>>> Afraid they'll take your computer away for failing to use the
>>>> Korporate Desktop Environment?
>>>
>>> They're more likely to take it away for not using that OS from the top
>>> left corner of the US called (*expletive deleted*).
>>
>> :-)
>>
>> But KDE/Gnome are clones of the Windows user-interface. By going down
>> that path you are protecting yourself from them by doing what they want:
>> Becoming more like them.
>
> It's like alcohol. I can take it or let it alone.
>
>> That makes no sense.
>>
>> KDE/Gnome are all free and open source now, but they won't be for long.
>> And once the patents are all secured in the corrupt,
>> corporate-controlled courts, Linux is a thing of the past.
>
> Not over this side of the water, here it's going the other direction.

If they are using KDE/Gnome, then that's an illusion.

Here's how it works: The people behind KDE, the one's that
are financing all that development (hundreds of thousands of
person-hours by very skilled workers*), want people to become
dependent on KDE. They want them to forget about the shell.
To be afraid of it.

(* Do you think the corporations make that kind of investment
without expecting a huge payoff?)

Pretty soon there won't BE any shell or 'xterms' on the KDE OSes.
It doesn't need the shell. They have developed their own way of
making system calls. A different protocol.

That's exactly what happenned with Windows: When it first began
it kept the DOS shell user-interface, then it phased it out.

So now there isn't any way to run Windows except with their
integrated desktop environment, and no one can tell what's
really going on under the hood. And the user certainly can't
control it, either.

Because it's not open source software. They are just coming
at it from another direction with Linux.

In the case of Linux, making it closed-source and non-free
software will be the last step, rather than the first.

But the end result will be the same.

Getting rid of the shell and all those wonderful utilities
will be the next step after everyone is hooked on KDE.
And integrating the whole system like Windows is: KDE
won't be an option, it will BE Linux, as far as the user
is concerned.

See? Whenever you are dealing with a group that wants to
make it easy: "user-friendly", you are dealing with someone
who wants you to be an ignorant and dependent appliance
operator.

Computers just aren't simple and they never will be.

But running Linux from the shell is a lot easier than
running it from KDE. It only seems to be the other way
around to most people because they already know how to
use Windows and KDE is a Windows-interface clone.

Tom

On 2008-02-03, Tom Newton <tom@server.invalid> wrote:
>
> If they are using KDE/Gnome, then that's an illusion.
>
> Here's how it works: The people behind KDE, the one's that
> are financing all that development (hundreds of thousands of
> person-hours by very skilled workers*), want people to become
> dependent on KDE. They want them to forget about the shell.
> To be afraid of it.
> (* Do you think the corporations make that kind of investment
> without expecting a huge payoff?)

Assuming that's the case, then their desire is to make money off of support.
That seems to be the current biz model for open source.


>
> Pretty soon there won't BE any shell or 'xterms' on the KDE OSes.
> It doesn't need the shell. They have developed their own way of
> making system calls. A different protocol.

Again, maybe, however, it would only alter the KDE setup, not Linux itself.


> That's exactly what happenned with Windows: When it first began
> it kept the DOS shell user-interface, then it phased it out.

There in is one of the advantages of open source.


>
> Because it's not open source software. They are just coming
> at it from another direction with Linux.

Again maybe, maybe not...it depends on a whole host of issues, most withoout
easy solutions.

> In the case of Linux, making it closed-source and non-free
> software will be the last step, rather than the first.
>
> But the end result will be the same.

Linux will never be closed source. I don't believe Torvalds would allow this
condition to exist.

> Getting rid of the shell and all those wonderful utilities
> will be the next step after everyone is hooked on KDE.
> And integrating the whole system like Windows is: KDE
> won't be an option, it will BE Linux, as far as the user
> is concerned.

Unlike closed source, Linux will always have other options.

> But running Linux from the shell is a lot easier than
> running it from KDE. It only seems to be the other way
> around to most people because they already know how to
> use Windows and KDE is a Windows-interface clone.

I rarely run KDE, in fact I rarely run a GUI, when I do it's flux. However,
that said, I'm not sure, it only seems that way to me, but it seems that KDE
does a better job of managing available memory.


ken

Mark South wrote:

> But any of them should be capable of working correctly, and so I asked
> because I am obviously missing exactly how to ensure that KDE works
> with Skype...

Perhaps an enquiry on comp.windows.x.kde might elicit an answer, I have
found that someone there usually has an answer to most 'hitches' quite
quickly.
--
Two Ravens
"...hit the squirrel..."

Mark South wrote :

> If I start KDE with no apps running in the system tray from the
> previous session, Skype works OK. Once I play some music with
> noatun, it fails.

Then try start skype with 'artsdsp' like this:
artsdsp -m /foo/bar/skype
--
Thomas O.

This area is designed to become quite warm during normal operation.

On Sun, 03 Feb 2008 17:48:56 +0000, Two Ravens wrote:

> Mark South wrote:
>
>> But any of them should be capable of working correctly, and so I asked
>> because I am obviously missing exactly how to ensure that KDE works
>> with Skype...
>
> Perhaps an enquiry on comp.windows.x.kde might elicit an answer, I have
> found that someone there usually has an answer to most 'hitches' quite
> quickly.

Thanks for the advice - it's noted. As is usual, I asked first in the
group I know before entering a strange group and asking a question that
everyone there already knows the answer to. There's also the danger that
the response will be "No-one here uses Slack, so that must be the
problem."

Further experimentation leads me to suspect that noatun is badly
behaved. Why do I say that? Because when I close noatun and run Amarok
(configured to use ALSA) instead, Skype can't connect when Amarok is
playing, but the moment Amarok is paused, the Skype test call works.

Damn. Now I have to work out how to configure all those options in
Amarok, it's almost as complex as gxine....

On Sun, 03 Feb 2008 16:25:38 +0000, Tom Newton wrote:

> On 2008-02-03, Mark South <mark.south@null.invalid> wrote:
>>>>
>>> Once again, you are talking apples and oranges above. A window manager
>>> and an integrated desktop environment like KDE or Gnome, are very
>>> different beasts.
>>
>> Some say so. I believe it to be a matter of degree. There is a
>> spectrum, and some window managers come close to providing desktop
>> environments (Enlightenment, Windowmaker) and some have configuration
>> to make it possible, like fvwm-crystal.
>
> It's not as simple as 'degree'. A window manager is a utility.
>
> An integrated desktop environment is a user-interface that conceals the
> way you OS really works.

The degree is in how much the wm does for you, and how much the
underlying system is concealed. Fvwm is a very plain, no-frills, wm.
When one uses the fvwm-crystal setup, it's basically like interacting
with a desktop environment.

>>> KDE/Gnome _have_ window managers. They are not window managers.
>>
>> Yup. It's a layered stack.
>>
>>> I am using a great window manager right now, called ratpoison. It's
>>> just about infinitely configurable.
>>>
>>> It's 112K with no special libs. Compare that to the size of KDE or
>>> Gnome and all the special libs they need...
>>>
>>> We are talking orders of magnitude of size difference and functional
>>> difference.
>>
>> Indeed. And I prefer a bicycle as a means of getting about, but
>> sometimes a train is more practical.
>
> That's not an accurate analogy. You can't do anything with KDE that
> others can't do with ODE.

Well, no analogy is accurate, but the train and the bicycle have
different advantages. No one has ever taken a train to the top of
Kilimanjaro, and no bicycle has ever gone over 400 km/h (well, OK, inside
a train or plane it has :-).

> Getting rid of the shell and all those wonderful utilities will be the
> next step after everyone is hooked on KDE. And integrating the whole
> system like Windows is: KDE won't be an option, it will BE Linux, as far
> as the user is concerned.
>
> See? Whenever you are dealing with a group that wants to make it easy:
> "user-friendly", you are dealing with someone who wants you to be an
> ignorant and dependent appliance operator.

When we first interacted in this group, you said you were going to ignore
me because I was trying to make you paranoid....

On Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:18:00 +0100, Thomas Overgaard wrote:

> Mark South wrote :
>
>> If I start KDE with no apps running in the system tray from the
>> previous session, Skype works OK. Once I play some music with noatun,
>> it fails.
>
> Then try start skype with 'artsdsp' like this: artsdsp -m /foo/bar/skype

Will experiment, thanks for the tip.

On 2008-02-03, Mark South <mark.south@null.invalid> wrote:
> On Sun, 03 Feb 2008 16:25:38 +0000, Tom Newton wrote:
>
>> On 2008-02-03, Mark South <mark.south@null.invalid> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>> Once again, you are talking apples and oranges above. A window manager
>>>> and an integrated desktop environment like KDE or Gnome, are very
>>>> different beasts.
>>>
>>> Some say so. I believe it to be a matter of degree. There is a
>>> spectrum, and some window managers come close to providing desktop
>>> environments (Enlightenment, Windowmaker) and some have configuration
>>> to make it possible, like fvwm-crystal.
>>
>> It's not as simple as 'degree'. A window manager is a utility.
>>
>> An integrated desktop environment is a user-interface that conceals the
>> way you OS really works.
>
> The degree is in how much the wm does for you, and how much the
> underlying system is concealed. Fvwm is a very plain, no-frills, wm.
> When one uses the fvwm-crystal setup, it's basically like interacting
> with a desktop environment.

If so, then fvwm-crystal is not a window-manager, a utility, it is a
large collection of applications and utilities.

The fvwm package for 12.0 is only 1.4M, so it obviously is not in the
same league as KDE/Gnome.

Just the base install of KDE (total of packages) is almost 300MB.

In both cases, of course, that's their compressed (gzipped) sizes.

So using fvwm-crystal is not anything like running KDE/Gnome.

>>>> KDE/Gnome _have_ window managers. They are not window managers.
>>>
>>> Yup. It's a layered stack.
>>>
>>>> I am using a great window manager right now, called ratpoison. It's
>>>> just about infinitely configurable.
>>>>
>>>> It's 112K with no special libs. Compare that to the size of KDE or
>>>> Gnome and all the special libs they need...
>>>>
>>>> We are talking orders of magnitude of size difference and functional
>>>> difference.
>>>
>>> Indeed. And I prefer a bicycle as a means of getting about, but
>>> sometimes a train is more practical.
>>
>> That's not an accurate analogy. You can't do anything with KDE that
>> others can't do with ODE.
>
> Well, no analogy is accurate, but the train and the bicycle have
> different advantages. No one has ever taken a train to the top of
> Kilimanjaro, and no bicycle has ever gone over 400 km/h (well, OK, inside
> a train or plane it has :-).

I don't get that. But the fact is that an ODE user (running from the shell
in the X environment) can do _more_ than the KDE user can.

Yes, I know there's an 'xterm' available within KDE. But if you don't
understand the shell it isn't of much use. It's just window-dressing.
You are limited to what KDE can do.

You are the one riding the bicycle, and the propagandists at KDE
have convinced you that you are riding the train.

"Things Go Better With KDE"

>
>> Getting rid of the shell and all those wonderful utilities will be the
>> next step after everyone is hooked on KDE. And integrating the whole
>> system like Windows is: KDE won't be an option, it will BE Linux, as far
>> as the user is concerned.
>>
>> See? Whenever you are dealing with a group that wants to make it easy:
>> "user-friendly", you are dealing with someone who wants you to be an
>> ignorant and dependent appliance operator.
>
> When we first interacted in this group, you said you were going to ignore
> me because I was trying to make you paranoid...

(I'll have to see that quote, and I don't think you can come up with it. If
you do, be sure to post the message id and such, so that it can be seen in
context.)

Paranoia is an irrational fear. There's nothing irrational about
expecting corporations to do what corporations _always_ do. They
claim to be in favor of competition and free markets, but every
single action they take is in the opposite direction: Towards the
creation of captive markets and monoply and the elimination of
the competition.

But that's all beside the point. Like the rest of the KDE addicts,
you are clearly unwilling to face the important issues involved here.

You refuse to even face basic facts like the enormous differences
between a window manager and an integrated desktop environment.

I sure hope that you don't think you are fooling me, or anyone
else who has a functioning mind, with your evasive responses.

If you want to use KDE, then do so. And those who want to use ODE
will do so.

Note: For anyone just tuning in, ODE, the Other Desktop
Environment, is simply running Linux from the command prompt
within the X environment. It is not, as the folks in the
Korporate Desktop Environment boardroom (and their technocratic
minions and couch potato parishioners) want you to believe, very
difficult.

Many, many Linux runners use the ODE.

Tom