75 replies to this topic

[Donkeymog]

I used to have weird audio/video sync issues with Mint & Ubuntu. I think they must be fixed now, they just kinda stopped happening.

[matrim]

There is an alternative to Ubuntu that I've looking into the last months.

 

it's called Chakra

http://www.chakra-project.org/

 

It uses KDE X with Plasma, looks great, and more or less as easy as Ubuntu.

 

Ubuntu is based on the Debian dist while chakra is based on Arch Linux.

[toysintheattic]

I ran into one annoying problem. Wine doesn't play audio through my usb interface, even though I set audio output to usb in winecfg. I can listen to music with it, since there's a setting for it within foobar, but any games I try to run with it send the audio through my laptop speakers.

 

It's not a huge deal, if I want to play a game I can just plug my headphones directly into the laptop, but it's a little inconvenient.

[matrim]

I ran into one annoying problem. Wine doesn't play audio through my usb interface, even though I set audio output to usb in winecfg. I can listen to music with it, since there's a setting for it within foobar, but any games I try to run with it send the audio through my laptop speakers.

 

It's not a huge deal, if I want to play a game I can just plug my headphones directly into the laptop, but it's a little inconvenient.

Have you used the latest version of Wine?
I remember having some sound issues myself but it got solved when I changed version.

[Donkeymog]

Looks great. I might install it over my Windows partition just to play around with.

[toysintheattic]

Hmm, updating wine made it worse. Now it doesn't even see that there's a device, and it doesn't work with foobar any more.

[toysintheattic]

JUST KIDDING, I rebooted and it works flawlessly now. I know how to use computers, I swear.

[Donkeymog]

If you use PlayOnLinux you can select which version of wine to use separately for each program. It also provides scripts for auto-installing all the necessary libraries to run the program under wine and will recommend the most suitable version and settings to run it under. 

 

There's an apt repository:

 

 

sudo apt-get install playonlinux
 

enjoy.

[Donkeymog]

The only things I seem to have issues with are wifi adapters. Like, every WiFi adapter ever.

 

Yeah, the wifi adapter for my new laptop had some weird BIOS lock that you needed some windows driver to toggle. Kinda frustrating for a long time there until I discovered that I could just turn it off in BIOS. Took me 4 hours of reading message boards to find someone who had mentioned that option.

[Vicious Parker]

I know it's not exactly an original thought, but the only thing that's really preventing Linux from becoming big are the big names developers, or at least, having some big name developers pop up on linux. I've been thinking about this lately in the context of an android tablet I have been using quite a lot for the last month or so. It's an asus transformer pad, TF101 with the keyboard dock. And yes, I know, even though android is based on linux, it is not at all like desktop versions of linux. But please hear me out.

 

There are two very major problems holding back this tablet, and likely holding back later models (the one I'm using is somewhat outdated). The first and most obvious problem is that it's stuck using only android apps. Phone and tablet technology is honestly to the point where the apps should be at least as functional as desktop applications were 5 years ago, but they're just... not. That's not to say that they're bad, mind you. But one of the better android apps (And the best browser), Chrome, is miles behind Chrome on the desktop. And let's not get started with simple office apps like word processing.

 

But the other main issue is the damn keyboard. Physically, it's a fine thing .It adds loads of extra battery life to the system without adding too much weight, and the keyboard itself is mostly OK for typing, with the exception of the too small right shift key. But Asus literally did the bare minimum to make this thing work with android. When using the physical keyboard, you can't use android's built in spell check or auto correct features, the track pad is utterly useless, and you can't even use common keyboard functionality like copy and paste. No control+c or control+v. The power was in Asus' hands to create something really useful, but they failed miserably.

 

I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that it's not simply enough to have a thing, such as a keyboard for your android tablet, or a linux compatible version of a program. Companies really need to put themselves in to the business of making products for Linux. I hope it happens soon.

[Monkeydog]

I thought you hated Chrome?

[Vicious Parker]

I don't, I just prefer Firefox. On the desktop, anyway. Chrome is really the only choice for android, because none of the other browsers really work for anything..

[Donkeymog]

How do you feel about ubuntu's ongoing efforts to work across all devices (desktop, tablet & mobile)?

[Vicious Parker]

If they can match even half of the cross platform functionality and cloud services that Google provides, it might really be something. I only have a handful of apps that I use on a regular basis, and they are all replaceable.

However, my wife and I sync a lot of things through our phones. She is a bit harder to convince to try a new technology. That may be an issue.

Also... If phone carriers in the U.S. didn't have a stick up their asses regarding people modifying their phones... But that's an entirely different topic.

[Monkeydog]

Also... If phone carriers in the U.S. didn't have a stick up their asses regarding people modifying their phones... But that's an entirely different topic.

To be fair that's only ATT and Verizon. Sprint doesn't care much and T-Mobile will unlock phones for you if you ask, they do not give a shit.

[Vicious Parker]

Since there don't appear to be any really good, free video editors for Windows, I now have a partition for Ubuntu studio. It's actually kinda neat. I've only used it a bit so far, but I like it.

[Donkeymog]

What video editor does Ubuntu Studio have? Is it any good?

[Vicious Parker]

Open shot, which is available in the Ubuntu software center. I haven't had much time to try it put yet, though.

[lazlo falconi]

Have you tried Avidemux?

[Vicious Parker]

No, I haven't heard of it. And I've searched for this kind of stuff several times. How is it this hasn't come up? I'll check it out, out of curiosity.