[linux-audio-user] A couple of questions

[Christoph Eckert]

Hi Lee,


> System->Preferences->Sound then select the USB audio device from the
> "Default sound card" menu

since I used SuSE and Mandrake, I dislike distro dependent configuration 
tools. Creating distro independent configuration tools makes more users 
benefit from the efforts, make them more versatile and user friendly.

Setting up a DSL connection in Mandrake 10 with DrakConf was a pain, and 
as I used vi it was very simple. So I wonder if a distro independent 
GUI pppoe config tool was a bad idea?

The same for configuring modems and other networking devices. I never 
understood where I find the config files on different distros, so a 
cool config tool which hides the underlaying system from the user is 
not only convenient, it also collects the knowledge of various distro 
architectures in its code.

A further problem is that some Distros change the defaults of software 
packages. I remember the times I used SuSE. KDE often misbehaved. On 
Gentoo, I almost get a plain KDE and many things I had to struggle with 
on SuSE or Mandriva are gone.

alsaconf is a great helper application because it includes support for 
various distros so many users have benefit from it instead only the 
users of one distribution. I'd like to add a further argument: if we 
leave system configuration to the packagers, we'll see two problems:

* In commercial distros, if a package is not as optimally preconfigured 
as it could/should be, it is unlikely that it will be improved after 
the release date

* Even in community driven projects we often see that packages that are 
not optimally preconfigured don't get fixed for a long time, maybe 
because the responsive packager has little time or even interest in 
doing it


Please note that these points are not a personal complaint at all. I'm 
very happy with my Gentoo box. But when it comes to "Jeo Average" I 
think we can still improve the usability of current systems.


Best regards


ce