No event sounds in XFCE 4.6.2 on Debian Sid (maybe Slackers can help?)
 

I recently gave XFCE a try, after using Openbox for a long time and I really like it, so that I think I will switch totally to XFCE. All is working fine, except one thing: I really would like to have event sounds.

So I launched the Appearance-Module and checked under the Settings-tab both Enable event sounds and Enable input feedback sounds. Following the tooltip for the event sounds I also installed libcanberra, but I get absolutely no event sound.

This is what I have installed to get this enabled:
There is also a module named libcanberra-pulse, but I did not install that, just because I am not using pulse-audio.

I thought, maybe there is a lack of a sound theme, so I also installed freedesktop-sound-theme, but that didn't help.

I did already searched with Google and in this forum, but have found nothing that would help me.

I would be very happy if anyone can give me an advice what to check or has a link to a tutorial for this sounds.

I would recommend that if you can, switch to PulseAudio on your Linux box. As for the sound scheme, is one installed, either by default, or downloaded? If not, you can add sound schemes by browsing at trusted repositories or websites online. As on every computer I've installed Linux on over the years, including a Compaq, Acer, Dell, Apple, and HP, I've never had any serious sound issues on Linux. I hope these tips somewhat help you solve your problem.

Thanks for your reply. If it is possible I would relinquish pulse-audio, but I will try that, if there is no other solution.
But I would assume that it must be possible to get the sounds with alsa also.

OK, I tried it with installing pulseaudio and libcanberra-pulse, but that also didn't work. Pulseaudio seems to be configured correctly, sound is working with other applications.
Any other suggestions?

Have you seen this 1?
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/nozzy123nozzy/20090502/1241279528

Seems that this HowTo is to old, I can't even download the snapshot with the given command.

Sorry was looking at header it's dated 2009.

No problem, I am glad for any help.

[offTopic]
Have you tried LXDE?, that XFCE thing takes 45 seconds to start on my laptop with 2 GB ram!!
[/offTopic]

Much faster on my machines. I know LXDE, but it is not mine, I set it up on some low-spec machines and it works fine, but I feel like I am missing something with LXDE. Except the sound issue, XFCE works fine for me.

Anyone has got that working? Maybe I have to wait till XFCE 4.8 gets into Debian to get that working.
I even tried to install sound-theme-freedesktop from Ubuntu, but that doesn't work also.

Have the mailing list people too failed to respond? http://www.xfce.org/community

Thanks for the link, I forgot that I can ask them. But I am not sure if this is a problem of Debian or XFCE. Maybe one of the Slackers can help here, they should have that version of XFCE pre-installed. I ask them before going to the mailing list, changed the thread-title accordingly.

To all Slackers, just one question, do you have event sounds in your XFCE working? I would like to know if my problem is related to Debian or XFCE, before asking at the XFCE-mailinglist.

4 Seconds to the desktop on my machine with 2 GB of RAM and it is not a new machine. 10 seconds for the 'helpful hint' box to pop up.

But what about the sound?

I may have missed it, but I wasn't aware Xfce 4.62 "natively" supports events sounds. Perhaps that is something that can be added, but there is nothing in the Settings Manager for event sounds.
However, I have added a start-up sound in the "Session and Startup" under the "Application Autostart" tab.
Click on the + button and a menu will pop up. In there give it a name and in the command box put,

play /pathtosound/soundname

To add a volume level you can add vol x to end of the line above, e.g.,

play /pathtosound/soundname vol 4

You might want to post this message in the Slackware forum. They are usually very helpful.

I see in your signature your machine also runs Arch.
You could install Xfce under Arch and see if you have system sounds there.

You can enable them under the Settings-tab in the Appearance-dialog. Your advice with the starting sound is good, but not really what I am looking for.


Arch has already XFCE 4.8, so I don't know if it is a Debian or XFCE issue if I try it there.

Not in any of the Xfce builds for Slackware I've used. Maybe that is particular to your Linux distribution?
Generally, as a rule, the developers of Slackware do not modify a package other than to ensure it will run in Slackware.

That confuses me a little bit, since the event sounds came from upstream, as stated in the XFCE blog. So I don't think that these settings are only specific to Debian.

Hi,
I'm running aptosid (among others), with xfce. I dislike system sounds, but to test I did what you did, viz:
logged out and back in again, and lo! the damn thing beeps at me. Ugh!

As aptosid is based on sid I would assume that it is not a Debian issue. So now I would like to know what the differences are between yours and mine configuration. I think I will make an aptosid install into a VM to compare that. Did you simply installed XFCE on aptosid? AFAIK it comes with KDE as DE.

Edit: Just saw that they have XFCE-ISOs.

You may very well be correct, but I've never seen it in any of the Slackware specific builds of Xfce.

I don't get it. I just downloaded aptosid and ran it live in a VM. I made sure that sound works and enabled the event sounds, logged out and in again, and it doesn't work. I can't see what I am doing wrong.

I just used the xfce iso.