[alsa-devel] alsaconf usefulness

[Takashi Iwai]

At Sun, 20 Jan 2008 20:19:29 +0500,
Alexander E. Patrakov wrote:
> 
> Hello developers,
> 
> Debian applies the following patch to alsaconf:
> 
> Index: alsa-utils-1.0.15/alsaconf/alsaconf.in
> ===================================================================
> --- alsa-utils-1.0.15.orig/alsaconf/alsaconf.in	2007-10-21
> 14:57:02.000000000 +0200
> +++ alsa-utils-1.0.15/alsaconf/alsaconf.in	2007-10-21 14:57:02.000000000 +0200
> @@ -458,8 +458,16 @@
>      Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) driver.
> 
> 
> -  You should stop all sound applications now." $version)
> -  $DIALOG --msgbox "$msg" 20 63 || acex 0
> +  You should stop all sound applications now.
> +
> +  Please notice, that sound configuration with this script
> +  is not needed if you are running testing/sid with an up
> +  to date kernel and your sound device is a supported PCI
> +  one. In that case *udev* is predestinated to load your
> +  driver ;)
> +  But any way, you can finish this procedure with a working
> +  PCI-Sound at the end." $version)
> +  $DIALOG --msgbox "$msg" 24 63 || acex 0
>  }

Ditto for USB.  It won't be detected anyway.

> 
>  # FAREWELL
> 
> The added note is completely valid: in most cases, there is nothing to
> do, even for ISA-PnP cards (because all self-respecting distributions
> already contain a rule for loading ISA-PnP drivers). However, the very
> presence of alsaconf generates a lot of support traffic on forums in
> the form "I have tried alsaconf and it didn't help" (or worse, ruined
> a working setup). Also, it cannot deal with more than one sound card.
> 
> Could you please either apply the above patch (of course, replacing
> the wording with a distro-neutral one),

Yes, that's better.  Majority of people have no idea what testing/sid
means.

> or just drop this obsolete program

No, it's no option.  Your world isn't mine, there are still users
(unfortunately) for old systems...

> and replace it with the "alsa-unmute" script which essentially
> contains the same as the set_mixers() function (but allows to specify
> the card to unmute)?

A program to initialize the sound status is really nice.  I have
worked on it a little bit and some code snippet to add "alsactl init"
to initialize the volume levels on certain dB level.
I'll still need to brush up for publishing it, though.


Takashi