I have been having troubles with midi output because when I go to the Control Center --> sound system in Mandrake 10, it gives me no midi devices to select from.

I thought that maybe MIDI support wasn't compiled into the kernel, so I checked with "make xconfig" and went through all the selections. There were a few that applied to OSS and midi.

Should I recompile my kernel? Will this give me midi support?


If I do have to recompile, what are some things I should know?

Should I backup everything? Including the files on my windows partition?


All replys are appreciated. (well unless ur gonna be a jerk)

i would recomend dumping the old sound system (OSS)

youu dont need to re-compile your whole kernel !

just go the the ALSA site, and download, configure and install the ALSA (advanced Linux Sound Architecture)
alsa tends to perform alot better than OSS.

make sure before you compile each alsa pacgake you read the output from './configure --help'
you will probably want to compile backawards compatibility with OSS since all your programs will
porbably be expecting OSS, not alsa. (yes, OSS -> AlSA emutaion works better than OSS)

anyways.... this is what i recomend.

I do have ALSA on my system, but I guess maybe it wasn't preconfigured for midi use. So do you think I should just download a newer version of ALSA and install it?

Thanks for the suggestion.

is the version of alsa you are working with compiled with MIDI support ?
are you sure your card supports midi ?

if the alsa you are using has not been configured to work with midi, then you will need to re-compile.

i would compile alsa-driver alsa-utils and alsa-libs (and maybe alsa tools)
make sure you read ./configure --help and pass configure the correct parameters...

for example when compiling the driver, you should at least use the parameter
--with-cards=(your card's module) its a waste of time and memory compiling suppor for all cards