Fedora + KDE + Sound Apps

[n2ize]

After installation of Fedora 11 which included migration from KDE3 to KDE4 everything was working fine and all of a sudden all the KDE sound apps stopped working. Anytime a KDE app would try to play a sound it would crash and send a Signal 6 (SIGABRT). I examined the backtrace and alkl I could gather was that the phoneon xine backend was balking somewhere and not playing nice. Only problem is that the xine backend was working fine and I couldn;t see any reason for it to suddenly fail after it had been working fine. But there was nothing I could do to get it to work. So I switched from the xine backend to the "gstreamer-phoneon" backend and all of a sudden it worked. So at least my kde sounds work via gstreamer but I still cannot figure out what the hack happened with xine. The way in which sound is handled in KDE has changed since KDE3 and I am not entirely familiar with the new sound system.

Linux is great but it's still somewhat of a headache when it comes to sound.

[W2NAP]

Linux is great but it's still somewhat of a headache when it comes to sound.

pulse audio has given me nothing but problems on this tower with sound.... and kubuntu sound is compleatly dead on this tower. why? i still never figured it out

[n2ize]

Linux is great but it's still somewhat of a headache when it comes to sound.

pulse audio has given me nothing but problems on this tower with sound.... and kubuntu sound is compleatly dead on this tower. why? i still never figured it out

Ity seems like the brunt of the problems have to do with either the way the various apps play with the various backends or, more likely, the way the backends (i.e. xine, gstreamer, etc.) are playing with the various sound devices and the Linux kernel. Since I'm not a pro when it comes to kernel issues the backtrace's still look like Greek to me. But I'm learning how to decipher some of the more basic kernel issues...albeit slowly...veeery slowly.


What is really weird here is that pulseaudio WAS working and then all of a sudden out of nowhere I get a message saying, "pulseaudio not working should KDE ignore pulseaudio".. Huh ?? To make it more bizarre the sudden failure didn't coincide with any upgrades, reconfiguration or with the installation of any new software. It's like one minute it's playing ball and the next minute it's out on strike.

I tried asking around on the "redhat-install-list" but everyone there scratched their heads and looked at me like I was talking in Chinese. I'm tempted to sign on to the "fedora-list" and ask around on there. Seems that some of the folks over there are avid KDE fans.

From what little info I gathered there were some new things added in that broke some of the sound handling in KDE. Originally I was able to listen to an mp3, watch a DVD and run a flash video and all sounds would play simultaneously via pulseaudio...similar to the way it used to be handled via "artsd" in the older KDE. But artsd sucked (too many issues) and it was supposed to be replaced with something better. Unfortunately it seems like it's the new sound function (under KDE) is still chock full o bugs.

Well, at least I have sound. I am hoping things will improve over the next few upgrades.

[W2NAP]

i have found KDE 4 to be buggy as hell. (i still prefeer 3.5.10 KDE)

pluse audio i think was a giant mistake IMO i had to totally get away from kubuntu due to it not playing nice to my system... fedora on this tower dont play nice ether. sad part is this tower is alot of generic crap (sound vid, ect) so it should work ok.

i played around earlier...

Fedora 11. GNONE/KDE. both hard lockup at the install.

Kubuntu 9.04 w/ KDE4 works. the plasmas (widgets) give me hell (network manager plasma is a bitch) plus pulse audio loves to think digital needs to be used (as it can never use analog) so i end up with no sound.

Ubuntu 9.04 w/ gnome no sound untill i apply the latest kernel... but yes can drop out at any moment. and then im boned having to restart god knows how many times (last time took 37 reboots to get sound back) till i get sound back. plus Firefox 3.5 has a issue and loves to cause a lockup forcing me into a hard reboot

Debian (5) lenny. with KDE 3.5 works perfect no sound issues just awesome

now i can take the same crap and install on the laptop. Fedora works decent but a tad bit sluggish with KDE4 - no real sound issues., kubuntu same with KDE4 (sluggish) sometimes a pulse audio sound issue, Ubuntu w/ gnome. ok. sometimes a minor sound issue. firefox issue not seen on laptop like the tower. debian lenny, w/ kde 3.5 works perfect no problems at all.


only thing i can think of, is there is some major issues with pulse audio still (and just needs to be scrapped just use alsa for god sake at least it fucking worked fine) and the issues seem to be hardware related. KDE4 still is buggy so i still prefer 3.5 over 4, and firefox 3.5 has some major issues (memleak?) and possible flash-player -> pulse audio problem? causing lockups?

[n2ize]

I hear ya. As usual getting sound to work properly under Linux is a nightmare. Add to that the fact that I have 2 sound cards in my machine (because I do some weird things with audio processing) and all the quirky backends that Qt/KDE is using for sound these days and the nightmare quickly grows unmanageable. Miraculously though the sound is working here when and where I want it...most of the time.

The problem I am having is unpredictablity. What works now may not wiork at all next time If I upgrade a few packages or change some minor configurations it may all vanish and require troubleshooting and / or reconfiguration.

Case and point. Today I set up my virtual desktop so I can access from remote systems. It worked but guess what ? When I came back to the system console KDE took forever to start up, my panel configurations changed, and, my sound stopped working entirely. It took a couple of reboots and playing with the sound config panels to get it back again. Is this what I am going to have to go through each time I run on a remote desktop ? Unnacceptable. I hope not. If worst comes to worst I'll make sure I'm running GNOME when I am running via a remote desktop.

There are some fixes to the 'pulseaudio" system that I'm looking into. Hopefully they'll resolve the sound issues once and for all. In general the system is great , it has awesome features, it runs multimedia apps just fine, etc. But there are some issues with sound that simply need to be fixed once and for all. As far as KDE4 goes I suspect some of the issues lie within the underlying Qt-4.0 libraries and/or the way they have been implemented. At Qt4/KDE4 matures and the developers become more proficient I am sure the bugs will be ironed out and things will run smooth. KDE4 actually improved a lot from the first time I tried it under fedora 9 (Sulphur). Under Fedora 9 and prior to the first few bug-fixes KDE was so buggy it was literally unusable. I don;t think it even had any configuration tools, and the few it had barely worked.

Bear in mind, Fedora is the proving ground for what eventually goes into RHEL. As for us fedora users, we're the guinea pigs, or should I say, we're the patsy's. We generate the bug reports.

[W4GPL]

Pulseaudio will eventually be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but right now it's still a work in progress. I monitor PA's commit logs and they still constantly reworking some of the core features. I really like the virtual monitor stuff they have and the network streaming, but both eat up a bunch of CPU cycles -- though it improved with kernel-2.6.30.5-28.rc2.fc11 which I got from the development tree.

Wish I could offer you some advice with KDE, I haven't used KDE in years and I have no earthly idea how their sound system differs from Gnome. Are they still using Arts or have they compiled everything against PA? One thing I noticed if you're using the Alsa hook, you have to make sure your Alsa mixer is turned up, as well as Pulse. E.g.: 'alsamixer -c0' ; 'alsamixer -D pulse' from the console.

Also, if you did an upgrade from a previous version of Fedora, you might want to do a verify on the alsa-utils & alsa-plugins-pulseaudio packages. rpm -V alsa-utils ; rpm -V alsa-plugins-pulseaudio

[n2ize]

KDE is no longer using artsd (apparently) and they are using PA... KDE 4 is extremely buggy, almost to the point of being unusable. It's extremely unpredictable, it will run great for hours, days, then crash/freeze 6 times in a row. Likewise, sound under KDE is similarly nightmarish, extremely unpredictable, and haunted by evil demons.

For regular desktop users I would recommend downgrading to KDE 3 until KDE 4 is ready for the desktop. It is not ready for prime time yet.

[N2CHX]

I gave up on KDE years ago. Gnome and PulseAudio have their issues, but KDE was just a royal PITA.

[n2ize]

I gave up on KDE years ago. Gnome and PulseAudio have their issues, but KDE was just a royal PITA.

KDE3 was pretty stable and very reliable. I was using it for years. KDE4 has some bugs that will drive you crazy at times. Other times it works nicely. I just upgraded it so hopefully the upgrade will fix some of the bugs. I pioneered KDE4 when it first came included in the original spin of Fedora 9. Wow... want to talk buggy... It was almost totally unconfigurable and unusable at that time. But, the very next upgrade fixed a lot of the problems. I suspect that as KDE4 matures it will reach the same, or better, level of stability as KDE3.

[W4GPL]

For regular desktop users I would recommend downgrading to KDE 3 until KDE 4 is ready for the desktop. It is not ready for prime time yet.

Or just use Gnome. ;)