Hallo, Dave Phillips hat gesagt: // Dave Phillips wrote: Let's face it: an increasing part of the Linux user base is getting increasingly similar to Windows users. That's also a good sign. ciao -- Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org__

First, nothing in this email is intended as a plea for help or anything, unless someone knows of a location that addresses my issues. It's more just a statement and maybe a request to remember that not everyone is as Linux savvy as you old timers. Well, I'm slightly embarrassed to say that in many situations I'm one of those people. I've managed to almost get my Linux system to a state where it's usable day by day for most of the tasks I want to do, but many of the multimedia apps remain a mystery. I do use Ardour, and Rosegarden, and lots of other Jack apps, but the normal, day-to-day stuff is hard for people like me. Up front, I will also say that I think most of the info people like me need is probably out there, but it takes time, and it isn't easy. Most of us use Linux at home, in the evenings or whatever, and we're tired, or interrupted a lot with life, and that doesn't make it any easier. I use Jack all the time, and even though I completely understand Jack's Pro Audio purpose, I really do find I want and need a minimum set of apps that will do the basic things you need to do surfing the web, and that hasn't been easy. I now use alsaplayer to play MP3's, but it only works when I download the mp3's to my desktop, or browse them on my system. I have not managed to configure Konqueror (as a KDE user) to play mp3's inside of Konqueror when I just click on an mp3 URL. Nor have I managed to find an Ogg Vorbis player that works with Jack, although I really haven't invested much energy to do so. Beyond that, there are many web site you might go to that apparently use embedded Java to do whatever they want to do in the multimedia area, and that all fails miserably on my system. Many times it locks up the system. Many times it does nothing and just sits there with no messages about why it isn't doing anything. Linux distributions, and Linux desktops like KDE and Gnome, run many things in the background that get in the way of audio working well. Beyond that, they are configured for things like OSS, which gets in the way of using Alsa. I understand that's a choice they made, but it isn't easy to a non-IT person like me how to remove them and make Alsa work well. Anyway, I think there could be more done in the way of teaching people like me how to configure their systems to make all this work without having to get a PhD. A web site with a list of apps that work for OSS, and then Alsa, and beyond that Jack, with instructions on how to configure Gnome and KDE, would be really cool. Knowledge-based scripts that could check the system and help me find what does what and help get it fixed would be over the top, but nice. Anyway, again, take mercy guys, because there's a lot of people out there like me. Not that many have as much patience as I do, and Linux Audio is a lot better technically than it is from a user's perspective. Please don't take any of this as particularly negative, but really just as a statement from someone who isn't a developer and is a full time user. Linux Audio works, but it could work a lot better. Cheers, Mark Knecht (With apologies to Frank for sharing a part of his name and being so dumb!) ;-)