FC9 - sounds of silence

[Bill Davidsen]

Anne Wilson wrote:
> On Saturday 17 May 2008 13:51, Bill Davidsen wrote:
>> I did an upgrade from FC9beta to the release version, and everything
>> worked fine until I tried to play a clip from CNN. Then I tried youtube,
>> mlb.com, no sound anywhere, even though sound had been working. Appears
>> that pulseaudio has decided to take over sound and not let me use it.
>>
> Did you check that you had libflashsupport installed?
> 
>> Finally backed up and did and install from cold, sound worked, did the
>> updates from the fedora and updates repositories, sound worked but no
>> flash, added flash from the adobe site, clips play as silent movies.
>>
>> Looked for the pulseaudio docs, and decided people haven't improved them
>> since FC6, no hint of what to change, tons of other "no sound" posts on
>> various places.
>>
>> Many other problems, reinstalled FC8, all working again. And I briefly
>> had ubuntu on the machine and that worked, so the issues seem to be with
>> the FC9 release, no just Linux on this hardware.
>>
>> My feeling is that if I wanted an OS which insisted on doing things the
>> way the developer wanted, with docs which didn't cover the basics and
>> had only examples of the most complex cases rather than the things 90%
>> of users would want, I would be running Windows.
>>
> Well you gave F9 plenty of time to prove itself, didn't you?<sarcasm off>
> 
Ran the alpha, ran the beta, both worked. The release doesn't, if 
libflashsupport is needed I would expect the RPM to note that in the 
dependencies on install. I did not have to do a library manual install 
with alpha or beta versions.

As for pulseaudio, documentation *says* it needs work, and has needed 
work since FC6. Code is fun, documentation isn't. Moreover it worked 
until I played the CNN clip, so it broke without an error message. 
pulseausio should not be the default, it should be installed if you want 
to play games or do whatever tricky stuff it supports, and leave alsa in 
and working for simple-minded folk who just want one stream from one 
source to work using one (alsamixer) control, not some complex and 
semi-documented application which results in answers like "did you 
diddle the hidden sliders?" Why is hiding required control a good thing 
in the first place?

And yes, I think that having spent two weeks on the alpha and beta, I 
have given FC9 a chance to prove itself, and it has. Unfortunately 
proved itself worse than the beta...

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot