[LAU] mute laptop speakers with Intel HDA

[david]

Takashi Iwai wrote:
> At Mon, 06 Aug 2007 23:10:00 -1000,
> david wrote:
>> Arnold Krille wrote:
>>> Am Montag, 6. August 2007 schrieb Fons Adriaensen:
>>>> I assume most drivers are using the same interfaces to the
>>>> kernel, and the same services, and that these are relatively
>>>> stable.
>>>> But I could be completely wrong...
>>> Well, the kernel devs seem to change some interfaces rather often in binary 
>>> incompatible ways. And sometimes even on purpose (to drive away blob-drivers 
>>> like nvidia)...
>>>
>>> So it can be that one of these changes introduced a bug hard to find and 
>>> affecting only very few drivers. And as the developers will probably all have 
>>> the lastest kernels, they don't want to wast time by debugging a problem 
>>> fixed two kernel versions ago just because the user has 2.6.4 installed and 
>>> doesn't use a half decent distro...
>> Note: a decent distro (I've used several) doesn't necessarily have the 
>> "latest" kernel - cuz the latest may still be in the very unstable realm.
> 
> No more true.  Distros nowadays try to pick up the latest one as much
> as possible.  Take a look at recent openSUSE, Ubuntu, etc.
> Of course, it's adventurous to switch to early -rc kernel.  But the
> released kernel is supposed to be stable.  This reduces the
> maintenance a lot.
> 
> However, distros stick with the older kernel version for their
> "business" products, mainly for keeping the 100% binary and source
> compatibility, which many ISVs prefer.
> IOW, it's just the matter of money :)

Well, I don't run any business distros.

>> I know I've switched to newer kernels in the past and had whole bunches 
>> of devices quit working - for instance, had USB quit working completely. 
>> On one, networking quit working entirely, too. So when some developer 
>> tells me to "test again using the latest kernel," perhaps you understand 
>> why I'm not exactly eager to go do that?
> 
> Yeah, I can understand it, of course.  I have a bunch of machines with
> older kernels, too.  But, you understand that if no report back from
> the tester, the bug will be left simply broken?  Testing is a part of
> development cycle, and testing on the same environment is the
> important factor, as I mentioned.

It effects the developer's ability to duplicate the bug. I think it 
behooves the developer to test on the environment the person reports the 
bug on.

-- 
David
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community