LinuxQuestions.org - What features/changes would you like to see in future Slackware?

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- - What features/changes would you like to see in future Slackware? (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/what-features-changes-would-you-like-to-see-in-future-slackware-605827/)

Quote:

Originally Posted by volkerdi (Post 4897784)

Slackware was more of a rolling release

Some people are a bit nostalgic, it seems ;)

Based on the frequency of stable kernel updates lately it would certainly be quite a lot of extra work for Pat to build (let alone test) each stable kernel update. I manage to do that myself but it does seem endless at times...

Quote:

Originally Posted by T3slider (Post 4897842)

The frequency of Ben's updates to 3.2 haven't been too onerous, but I agree: Greg seems to have been pushing one out every 3 days or so, of late, and that's getting a bit silly.

How about adding, alsa-plugins

and a line in the "CHANGES_AND_hints" or "Slackware-HOWTO" on
creating a .asoundrc or /etc/asound.conf and adding this line,

defaults.pcm.rate_converter "speexrate"

(or "speexrate_medium" or "speexrate_best")?

Ah! This is the thread I was looking for. I'd like to see both Python 2.x and 3.x included.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cwizardone (Post 5293660)

What does that do?

Quote:

...Also install the alsa-plugins package if you want high quality resampling, upmixing/downmixing and other advanced features....

...High quality resampling

When software mixing is enabled, ALSA is forced to resample everything to the same frequency (48 kHz by default when supported). By default, it will try to use the speexrate converter to do so, and fallback to low-quality linear interpolation if it is not available[3]. Thus, if you are getting poor sound quality due to bad resampling, the problem can be solved by simply installing alsa-plugins.

For even higher quality resampling, you can change the default rate converter to speexrate_medium or speexrate_best. Both perform well enough that in practice it does not matter which one you choose, so using the best converter is usually not worth the extra CPU cycles it requires.

To change the default converter place the following contents in your ~/.asoundrc or /etc/asound.conf:

/etc/asound.conf

defaults.pcm.rate_converter "speexrate_medium"

Note: It is also possible to use libsamplerate converters, which are only about half as fast as the speexrate converters but do not achieve much greater performance. See discussion.
Note: Some applications (like MPlayer and its forks) do their own resampling by default because some ALSA drivers have incorrect delay reporting when resampling is enabled (hence leading to AV desynchronization), so changing this setting will not have any effect unless you configure them to use ALSA resampling...

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...e#Installation

kiss - keep it simple and stable as is.....

i think slackware 14.1 is way more stable than other distros out there which break more often...and true to X windows....

a dependency manager could be one option...

Quote:

When software mixing is enabled, ALSA is forced to resample everything to the same frequency (48 kHz by default when supported). By default, it will try to use the speexrate converter to do so, and fallback to low-quality linear interpolation if it is not available[3]. Thus, if you are getting poor sound quality due to bad resampling, the problem can be solved by simply installing alsa-plugins.

It is good, that HD audio codecs ("Azalia") introduced in 2004 support hardware mixing. The AC97 crap which required software mixing and resampling to 48 kHz is a thing of the past now.

Just a thought for a feature, but what about an ncurses script to help setup an asoundrc per user with ALSA with at least dmix and some other preincluded options for sample rates, etc?

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReaperX7 (Post 5294501)

Just a thought for a feature, but what about an ncurses script to help setup an asoundrc per user with ALSA with at least dmix and some other preincluded options for sample rates, etc?

The default asoundrc file is /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf, which has DMix.

As for the sample rate stuff, I find it really unlikely that it would make any real-world difference.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nitecrawler (Post 5293894)

a dependency manager could be one option...

Assuming you were serious, one of the ideas behind Slackware is that you don't need a dependency manager if you do a full install.

That said, Slackware used to include swaret (in /extra), and slapt-get is a standard part of most forks.

sbotools has a crude dependency resolver, but often it still boils down to you doing some grunt work.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jtsn (Post 5294461)

It is good, that HD audio codecs ("Azalia") introduced in 2004 support hardware mixing. The AC97 crap which required software mixing and resampling to 48 kHz is a thing of the past now.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/datas...ALC888_1-0.pdf
i don't see hardware resampling noted there
maybe it's in the driver

still, only one chip, that i know of, does resampling (ICE, aka VIA envy)

Any of the onboard chips usually are still Software Mixing only. I only know of a few onboard devices that actually do(did) hardware mixing and usually those chips are the same ones found on actual sound cards such as the Sound Blaster Emu*-series, C-Media OxygenHD, some older AC97 stuff like the Aureal 8810. Just about everything that is a CODEC style chip HDA or AC97 is software mixing only.

Quote:

Originally Posted by genss (Post 5294791)

i don't see hardware resampling noted there
maybe it's in the driver

A High Definition audio codec supports up to 15 streams with varying bit depths and sample rates (up to 192 kHz) with up to 16 channels per stream (only those channels must have the same parameters). So there is no need for software mixing nor resampling.

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www...cification.pdf