Some misc questions

Josh000 · 10-05-2009, 05:26 AM

Hi all,

Just some questions.

1. How can I enable ctrl * alt * f[n] key combinations in X? I am using stock X from slack64, and have tried with and without an xorg.conf. I used to be able to switch bewteen X, virtual consoles, and go back to X with alt + tab + f7.

How can I enable this behaviour? Where is it defined? Perhaps I did not install a required package?

2. Firefox. I have installed the GTK libaries, tango icon theme and firefox. I use fluxbox, and firebox looks terrible. I tried creating a .gtk-20.rc file specifying to use the tango icon set, which solved nothing. Any suggestions?

3. Sound. I can only play one thing at a time. I am using whatever sound system slack64 uses by default. I would like to be able to play a song, pause it, perhaps have multiple videos open and switch between them etc. Is there any easy solution to have acceptable desktop sound?

4. KMS video drivers. What is the difference between the KMS radeon driver in .31, and radeonfb?

Many thanks in advance.

kukibl · 10-05-2009, 05:48 AM

1. It works for me out of the box. You must know that when X (runlevel 4) is running only 6th virtual console is available (ctrl + alt + F6). I believe you can change this behavior in /etc/inittab.

2. Install gtk-chtheme (easiest way) or add something like this to your $HOME and name it .gtkrc-2.0.

Code:

include "/usr/share/themes/Nodoka-Aqua/gtk-2.0/gtkrc"

style "user-font" {
        font_name = "Sans 9"
}

widget_class "*" style "user-font"

gtk-font-name="Sans 9"

include "$HOME/.gtkrc.mine"

Of course, adjust it to your preference.

Edit:

For Tango icon theme you should add this line to above file:

Code:

gtk-icon-theme-name="Tango"

Didier Spaier · 10-05-2009, 05:54 AM

1. I use Fluxbox too (at runlevel 3) on Slackware64-13.0 and have no problem switching to virtual consoles with Ctrl+Alt+Fn and going back to Fluxbox with Alt+F7. I made a full install.

So not knowing which package is involved I suggest you install everything unless you miss harddisk space.

2. I do not have this problem with Firefox. See answer to #1.

3. Not sure I understand your point here. AFAIK by default Slacware64-13.0 uses the ALSA sound system. I have no problem with sound.

4. Sorry, I don't know.

adamk75 · 10-05-2009, 06:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Josh000

4. KMS video drivers. What is the difference between the KMS radeon driver in .31, and radeonfb?

It is generally not considered good practice to have two hardware drivers accessing the same device. One of the advantages to KMS is that you can now have a nice console framebuffer (at your monitors preferred resolution) using the same DRM driver that provides 3D acceleration (assuming, of course, that you are using the open source drivers).

Another advantage is the ability to smoothly switch from console to X (or from one X server to another).

For more information:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Featu...nelModesetting
http://kerneltrap.org/node/8242

The supported hardware has changed significantly since those items were written, but the concepts behind KMS are still the same.

Adam

Woodsman · 10-05-2009, 10:45 AM

1. The default Slackware settings leave only virtual console 6 available at all times. You might want to edit /etc/inittab. Perhaps the following might help:

Understanding X Session Alt-Fn Keyboard Assignments

Josh000 · 10-06-2009, 03:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Woodsman

1. The default Slackware settings leave only virtual console 6 available at all times. You might want to edit /etc/inittab. Perhaps the following might help:

Understanding X Session Alt-Fn Keyboard Assignments

Thanks for the tips guys.

Was this always the case? I can'T remember if I had to set up additional consoles in slack 8 or not.

I am still confused about sound. I am just using the default, but I can't have two movies playing simultaineously, or a movie and an mp3...

adamk75 · 10-06-2009, 03:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Josh000

Thanks for the tips guys.

Was this always the case? I can'T remember if I had to set up additional consoles in slack 8 or not.

I am still confused about sound. I am just using the default, but I can't have two movies playing simultaineously, or a movie and an mp3...

Most sound cards do not support hardware mixing and software mixing is not enabled in alsa by default. Honestly, I'm not even sure how you go about setting up software mixing in alsa these days. Most distributions simply use pulseaudio for software mixing.

Adam

Josh000 · 10-06-2009, 05:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adamk75

Most sound cards do not support hardware mixing and software mixing is not enabled in alsa by default. Honestly, I'm not even sure how you go about setting up software mixing in alsa these days. Most distributions simply use pulseaudio for software mixing.

Adam

Wow :|

I am somewhat surpirsed most soundcards do not support hardware mixing, as we should have gotten to that point by now. I am more surpised at just what a mess Linux Audio is. ALSA, OSS, pulese, no easy mixing...

Alien Bob · 10-06-2009, 02:31 PM

Alsa is able to mix multiple sound streams in software out of the box if the hardware does not support mixing, since the 1.0.9 release.
No configuration needed.

Eric

dugan · 10-06-2009, 02:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adamk75

Most sound cards do not support hardware mixing and software mixing is not enabled in alsa by default. Honestly, I'm not even sure how you go about setting up software mixing in alsa these days. Most distributions simply use pulseaudio for software mixing.

I use OSS4.

I switched to it after reading this article:
http://insanecoding.blogspot.com/200...-so-sorry.html

adamk75 · 10-06-2009, 03:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alien Bob

Alsa is able to mix multiple sound streams in software out of the box if the hardware does not support mixing, since the 1.0.9 release.
No configuration needed.

Eric

My apologies. The problem is that if the hardware doesn't support mixing, and you have software using the oss emulation in alsa, software mixing of other alsa or oss streams won't work.

I would guess that this is what is going on for the OP.

Adam

Josh000 · 10-07-2009, 07:03 AM

Thanks for the replies all.

I have only tried playing a movie with two movies at once with xine, or one movie and and mp3 with xmms. Do these programs use oss emulation, which is why mixing is not occurring?

adamk75 · 10-07-2009, 07:11 AM

I'd start by checking the preferences in xine and xmms. Also, launch them from a terminal and check to see if they return any errors when you try playing more than one item at a time.

Adam

Josh000 · 10-11-2009, 04:51 PM

OK guys, still having some issues.

1. I cannot switch to vt 6. I am using the default inittab, and see that vt6 should be enabled. I am using fluxbox, and ctrl + alt + f6 does not work. At all. How can I fix this? I assume it is maybe a wrong keymap and my alt key is not being detected for some reason, although alt + f opens the file menu in things fine...

2. Firefox still looks terrible. The only themes I have in /usr/share/themes are Default, Emacs and Raleigh. However, I installed the tango icons theme park, and am using a .gtkrc-2.0 as per the example above, with the first line omitted. Sureley this should still load tango icons? If I need a theme, what should I grab from the slack cd?

3. Changing the output driver to alsa allowed for software mixing with my sound, however I could not set this explicitly with xine. I was unable to increase the volume of a video file to louder than it should have been. Playing the same file on my pc with a different OS, and it was much louder, which was not due to artifical increasing of the volume as far as I could tell. Why would this be?

4. running dhcpcd did not work. It had worked previously, this time checking the logs, and just an error that the address the dhcp server offered was in use. I got around it by manual configuration, but why would this be?

5. Is there a way to automatically look for and get a dhcp address after a cable is plugged in? How would you set this up?

6. I am about to recompile and play with the KMS radeon driver. Do I have to do anything special with X that comes with slack 13? Do I have to recompile? If I don't will it still work, even if I am not getting the most out of it?

7. Is there any way to make a synaptics touchpad work properly in linux, i.e. with the tapping? A certain kernel driver, or particular X configuration?

8. I did my first Slackbuild. All I did was change ARCH to x86_64 and the version to the correct version. The program version is programname-1.4.2, and the name of the created package was programname-1.4.2-x86_64-1_SBo.tgz

Is this correct? Why append x86_64-1_SBo ?

9. How can I copy from an xterm into firefox. selecting and middleclick does not work, nor do the ctrl combinations.

adamk75 · 10-11-2009, 05:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Josh000

6. I am about to recompile and play with the KMS radeon driver. Do I have to do anything special with X that comes with slack 13? Do I have to recompile? If I don't will it still work, even if I am not getting the most out of it?

Enabling KMS will require updating your DRM to a newer version (kernel 2.6.31 should support KMS on all r100 through r500 GPUs), updating your libdrm to a newer version (and configuring it with the --enable-radeon-experimental-api) and the updating your DDX so it detects that KMS is enabled in libdrm. I do not believe that Mesa needs to be updated, but I'm not 100% certain of that.

Adam