Two problems in f9 - pulseaudio and kde4 - need suggestions

[Bill Davidsen]

William W. Austin wrote:
> I have been running linux since at least before rh5.0, and have built 
> and maintained many machines (both personal and professional - 
> including some fairly sophisticated networked machines) for a 
> long time.  But now I have hit two problems which have me stumped.
> 
> The first is a set of problems with pulseaudio.  On my favorite 
> workstation, a 64-bit machine with a dual-core cpu, I have both a SB 
> Audigy 2 (350) and sound on the mb 8-channel real-tek. 
>  
> Prior to f9, I have been running both for years without any problems.  
> The Audigy has been driving a 5+1 speaker system while the other was 
> used to pipe output from a speech synthesizer to a different set of 
> speakers.  Until f9 and pulseaudio this worked without a whimper.
> 
> I have now spent about 2 weeks reading everything I could find about 
> pulseaudio and am beginning to be convinced that either (a) the system 
> is inherently not usable for my setup, or (b) someone hosed up the 
> implementation used in f9.  From reading the problems in bugzilla - 
> especially the ones close as 'not a bug,' I have become convinced that 
> my only alternatives are to go back down to f8 OR to remove all 
> pulseaudio components from my system and figure out how to wing it from 
> there.

Your (a) and (b) are not mutually exclusive.

On older releases you could choose the mode of your audio system, and use 5+1 or 
  just front, or whatever. PA not only doesn't seem to have that capability, it 
blocks doing it at the ALSA or lower level (AFAIK).

In FC10 beta PA refused to use my old SB16 card, even though there's a driver 
for it. Wasn't detected at install, wasn't used with the driver manually loaded, 
no more odd problems with PA. Hey, it's beta, the card is old, I'm waiting until 
later to complain. But emulating the card in KVM, it works with FC9, not with 
FC10, so something has changed. I only have one real card, I was just playing.

-- 
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