KDE Phonon - really?
 

I have been trying out various distros lately, mostly i guess hoping that somethign new had happened in desktop development. I get a little bored every now and then with my usual setup, fluxbox rox and $panel.
KDE it seems has taken a major step backward in out of the box usability with phonon. It detects duplicate devices, devices that dont exist and even pops up little notifications that let you know that your sound isnt working because its too confused to find a sound device that does work. This is crazy. What were the developers thinking? And yes i got it to work so im not asking for advice on how to start it or make it work. You make it work by clicking arrows to move stuff up and down for every category of sound that you want to listen to (bear farts in the forest? ooh yeah ill do a few dozen clicks for that) and restarting alsa as needed, as opposed to sound just working out of the box. Seriously guys, what the hell were you thinking?

Have yet to have any issues with sound. It just works.

That hasnt been my experience. I usually have at least 5 sound devices dectected by phonon, including Esound and it seems to disable the first one it detects at start, and if that is the real one, the one that works, i have to restart alsa and maybe move devices up and down the list again. For me its just not worth the hassle. If kde is trying to be more windows like they have certainly succeeded imo, putting the user thru pointless busywork to reclaim functionality that should have just been there from the beginning. The reason snd-card 0 is snd-card 0 is that thats the one you are supposed to use first.
This seems to be a trend i have noticed lately tho, taking configuration mistakes out of the hands of users and writing a dedicatated application to handle them, maybe its a step forward?

It can be easy to forget sometimes that Gnu/Linux is not the only Unix like os around. Kde is doing a lot of work to make sure that kde remains neutral to Linux rather than the alternative and being Linux specific.

Here's your answer straight from Wikipedia,

Which is why there are several phonon backends.
Phonon - KDE UserBase Wiki - http://userbase.kde.org/Phonon#Backend_libraries

And i applaud their efforts, when its ready they should roll it out. If you google "sound fix kde problem" you get over 2 million results.

So you're complaining that it's configurable? :confused:

The real problem with Phonon for me is that only KDE things use it. I've got USB speakers. Gnome and Mate usually come with a tool to activate them. So does KDE, providing you're willing to use Dragon and Rekonq rather than VLC and Firefox.

I have gotten pretty attached to vlc and firefox. I guess im just not KDE's target audience.

This is Free software; if you don't like it; instead of whinging, you should make it better. If you can't code, make a contribution with a donation.

Im not whinging, its more on the order of ridicule. :) But seriously, nothing gets fixed if no one complains, and i do donate to open source projects.

5 sound devices?!!??! What the hell.....2 is the most I ever see in phonon (the actual sound card + HDMI controller). Maybe you've got a sound card + onboard sound + HDMI video card + other stuff.

There is some way to force the settings with phonon. I cant recall how its done (alt + F2-> kdesu something?). As phonon seems to work 100% of the time for me I've never had to figure out how.

Doesnt seem to be a 'functionality' problem, more like 'user doent know how to setup phonon'. ;)

Odd, I wouldnt have thought there is some way to get VLC and firefox working with the USB speakers + KDE. Not having any USB speakers, I cant test that.....

USB speakers are uncommon, and there may be a way around DavidMcCanns problem anyway.

I use firefox with KDE, and VLC sometimes, no issues at all here.

Yes 5 sound devices. I have the hdmi stuff blacklisted, so it doesnt even appear. My pci sound card makes at least 3 to 4 appearances and it includes ESD as well. If i fix it and log out of KDE and then back in to something else, say fluxbox, i have to restart alsa to get sound back. I know how to operate phonon, i just dont like being put thru the busy work of accommodating bad software. If i wanted to do that id be using windows.

Ok, i take it back. The problems i was experiencing with phonon previously do not appear in my recent install of slackware. In fact it worked fine. It must have been due to whatever distro specific tweaks had been made in the other linuxes i was trying. So sorry, my bad.

Actually, complaining does help nothing at all, it is just a way to vent and in this way may be to get some help from other users.
The only thing that helps to fix things is to report the bugs you find to the bugtracking system the developers use.

LOL, no problem....but can you tell us what distro and version you were using when you had the problem?