[linux-audio-user] Great news for JACK & KDE

[John Bleichert]

On Sat, 22 Nov 2003, Steve Harris wrote:
> Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] Great news for JACK & KDE
>
> On Fri, Nov 21, 2003 at 02:15:52 -0500, John Bleichert wrote:
> > I was trying to stay out of this thread, but... GNOME is prevalent on
> > Solaris because 1) building something like GNOME or KDE on Solaris is
> > non-trivial and you want the vendor (Sun) to do it for you. I have no idea
> > why many vendors have chosen GNOME. At least here at work and among the
> > geeks I know outside, KDE usage (on linux or BSD, whatever) is much higher
> > than GNOME usage, by a wide margin. YMMV. artsd does have some uses (see
> > below) and you can disable it if you want.
>
> I think that must be regional - in my hometown Gnome is far more popular
> than KDE - infact I dont think I know anyone who runs KDE.
>

Quite likely. I asked around with some friends on the internet and it
seems split pretty evenly. That and many people don't use either (I do
most of my recording using fluxbox). Too much coffee, not enough brain.

> > Also, as I understand it, ALSA is standard (in linux) starting with 2.6.0,
> > right?
>
> Yes.
>

In ths spirit of this thread, is it really even possible that any sound
server could be used across window managers? Are people suggesting that
jackd be used as the lower-level sound daemon all the window managers
could talk to? I assume ALSA in 2.6 is going to look (from above) just
like the OSS sound layer. Doesn't this solve the problem? Or do
artsd/esd/whatever get "in the way"? Will a window manager have to be
re-coded if it assumes there's a lower-level daemon that emulates
full-duplex on cheap hardware? artds has saved my bacon on 2 workstations
at work with cheap-arse onboard sound. Would something like KDE require
significant re-coding to use jackd?

artsd seems to work fine for me, including sound in browsers. But I turn
off all the window manager sounds (when using KDE) so maybe I've just
never seen the conflict. I don't use it when I use jack/ardour though.

off-topic: are there any newsgroups like this one that deal with home
studio design and layout for the hobbyist?

// John Bleichert
// syborg at earthlink.net