Kde volume control
I've done a fresh install of Debian/Testing on a new laptop and the volume control buttons aren't working. They make no apparent difference to the volume and no change to the volume settings according to alsamixer. It seems that the backend is "Phonon VLC". Is it possible to have KDE use ALSA directly without such things? Is there another desktop environment that has a more minimalist design without being like TWM? I want something that has notifications for USB devices, battery, network manager, etc but not too much else in the way of trying to take over everything and not having a process like plasmashell taking 10% of a CPU core when nothing is happening. -- Sent from my Huawei Mate 9 with K-9 Mail.
Hello Russell, On 3/29/18, Russell Coker via luv-main <luv-main@luv.asn.au> wrote:
I've done a fresh install of Debian/Testing on a new laptop and the volume control buttons aren't working. They make no apparent difference to the volume and no change to the volume settings according to alsamixer.
It seems that the backend is "Phonon VLC". Is it possible to have KDE use ALSA directly without such things?
Check and double check. Someone else was asking a while back about the Linux audio stack, on another forum, and I was digging around. Go looking for Pulse Audio, I think, certainly whichever it was, it had Lennart Poettering all through it, and trouble cooperating with other layers.
Is there another desktop environment that has a more minimalist design without being like TWM? I want something that has notifications for USB devices, battery, network manager, etc but not too much else in the way of trying to take over everything and not having a process like plasmashell taking 10% of a CPU core when nothing is happening.
I understand, very much. I am not happy with where all of them have gone, and even more displeased with the assumptions behind all of them. Yes, there are background tasks that make life easier, but there are things that we can learn to do for ourselves, and have a better experience for doing so, it works "our" way. I know you have a preference for KDE styles, but it may be worth looking at "Mate" and "Cinnamon". Yes, time to install and look around, but a better idea of how they behave, and possibly better able to suggest which to choose for others. I tend to stick with the "traditional" style of Gnome, and I too will be looking around again in due course. The other aggravation is that both the major desktops tend to have "tied" applications that share a family of libraries, and mix and match applications can bring in both sets of libraries, and even multiple versions of each, swallowing much disk space. This is not to advocate for a totally minimalist way, too much like the closed Mac silo ecosystem, but a better considered approach. Try to think about what functionality is necessary, what is a nice add on, and where it can be made extensible as things change, that can lead the programmers to do a more stable base that can better change with the changing usage. Regards, Mark Trickett
On Thursday, 29 March 2018 8:11:58 PM AEDT Mark Trickett via luv-main wrote:
It seems that the backend is "Phonon VLC". Is it possible to have KDE use ALSA directly without such things?
Check and double check. Someone else was asking a while back about the Linux audio stack, on another forum, and I was digging around. Go looking for Pulse Audio, I think, certainly whichever it was, it had Lennart Poettering all through it, and trouble cooperating with other layers.
Actually I'm not totally set on using ALSA. But I do prefer to use something that allows me to control things via a text mode interface, if only to provide a good way of verifying that things work as desired. I don't mind things that Lennart does, they generally work and are usually adequately documented.
I know you have a preference for KDE styles, but it may be worth looking at "Mate" and "Cinnamon". Yes, time to install and look around, but a better idea of how they behave, and possibly better able to suggest which to choose for others. I tend to stick with the "traditional" style of Gnome, and I too will be looking around again in due course.
Thanks, I'll give it a go.
The other aggravation is that both the major desktops tend to have "tied" applications that share a family of libraries, and mix and match applications can bring in both sets of libraries, and even multiple versions of each, swallowing much disk space.
Plasmashell takes 300M+ of resident memory and up to 10% of a 64bit CPU core. While there are some overheads in having 2 separate sets of libraries I don't think it matters when compared to that. Current Linux desktop environments have features that compare poorly to OS/2 2.x (which ran nicely in 16M of RAM). Apart from managing dynamic network connections and dynamic devices (bluetooth and USB) the Windows 3.1 GUI satisfied most of the needs of most users and ran in 2M of RAM. As for ease of use, having to ask on a mailing list for something like this after spending a few hours fiddling and Googling is a serious problem IMHO. Changing sound volume shouldn't be a difficult problem to solve, and in earlier versions of KDE it just worked. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
On 29/03/18 16:34, Russell Coker via luv-main wrote:
I've done a fresh install of Debian/Testing on a new laptop and the volume control buttons aren't working. They make no apparent difference to the volume and no change to the volume settings according to alsamixer.
If you can still change the volume via a mixer app, it sounds like the problem is with the buttons providing the right inputs. That may require changing the keyboard settings or something like that. And some laptops handle those buttons specially, through ACPI or other BIOS hacks, and therefore need special kernel drivers (!)
Is there another desktop environment that has a more minimalist design without being like TWM? I want something that has notifications for USB devices, battery, network manager, etc but not too much else in the way of trying to take over everything and not having a process like plasmashell taking 10% of a CPU core when nothing is happening.
I like XFCE, which like Cinnamon and Mate is inspired by earlier versions of Gnome, but I've also used LXDE which is even more minimal. And we had a great presentation on i3wm at the last LUV workshop. Cheers, Andrew
On Thursday, 29 March 2018 8:55:56 PM AEDT Andrew Pam via luv-main wrote:
On 29/03/18 16:34, Russell Coker via luv-main wrote:
I've done a fresh install of Debian/Testing on a new laptop and the volume control buttons aren't working. They make no apparent difference to the volume and no change to the volume settings according to alsamixer. If you can still change the volume via a mixer app, it sounds like the problem is with the buttons providing the right inputs. That may require changing the keyboard settings or something like that. And some laptops handle those buttons specially, through ACPI or other BIOS hacks, and therefore need special kernel drivers (!)
There were some issues in that regard, the volume up button only sometimes works, so I remapped them in KDE. I didn't mention that because it just complicates the description. But the volume down button always works at the Linux level so the inability to lower the volume is definitely a KDE issue.
Is there another desktop environment that has a more minimalist design without being like TWM? I want something that has notifications for USB devices, battery, network manager, etc but not too much else in the way of trying to take over everything and not having a process like plasmashell taking 10% of a CPU core when nothing is happening. I like XFCE, which like Cinnamon and Mate is inspired by earlier versions of Gnome, but I've also used LXDE which is even more minimal. And we had a great presentation on i3wm at the last LUV workshop.
Thanks, I'll check them out. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
participants (3)
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Andrew Pam -
Mark Trickett -
Russell Coker