Hi,

Linux newbie that likes to blow stuff up seeks enlightened indiviuals to help him dig his sorry butt outta gaming hell.

Here's the story...

I've got garbled sound in pretty much every game that I've run in Wine. I hit up Wine's website and found out that PulseAudio is the likely culprit. Most folks there suggest disabling PulseAudio and give various suggestions as to how to do so, none of which applies to my system (openSUSE 11.1, Gnome desktop). So I go to openSUSE's site and they say that it is not recommended to kill it.

Question: Should I kill PulseAudio or not? If so, how should I do so?

BTW: Every time the desktop plays a sound (minimizing a window, opening a menu, etc), after a few seconds pause I've got this weird click. Don't know if this is related or not.

Thanks

Yeah, this is a problem, and a sticky one. I posted something in your other thread about this, specifically gaming related. Check out http://www.cedega.com. They make a product called point2play, that I've had good luck with. Kinda like Wine, but specifically for games, and it handles things like DirectX emulation, sound, etc., very easily. Gotta pay a little for it, though, but it's well worth it.

For what it's worth, I've got OpenSuSE too, but use KDE. The 'regular' sound stuff is kinda twitchy, so if you turn things off, you may not get sound at ALL....so your mileage may vary...

Also, in case you don't check your other thread...thanks for your service, maingun.

I never really know how to respond when people say that. "Your welcome" just doesn't seem right. Thanks for the recognition. It really does mean a lot. I still like to blow stuff up and the Corps won't let me anymore so....

And now, Back to our regular griping!

Just checked out Cedega. Might be worth it. But why is there such a big difference of opinion on PA? If the damn thing don't work, why not switch to something that does?

Hehe...blowing stuff up is always a good time.

The audio thing is a pain, to be sure, and might be fixed in the next (soon to be released) version. From what I've read, it has to do, in part, with phasing out the older OSS drivers, and moving towards Alsa. The pulse part comes in, as kind of a 'bridge' between the two, so older apps can shovel data to OSS, and have it passed to Alsa, and out the speakers. Also provides some pieces that are missing in Alsa right now, such as Bluetooth headset support.

Eventually, Alsa is going to be king of the hill, and there won't be all this gyrating with different audio methods. But there's a good way to go before all the legacy stuff goes away. I played with it on my system, and wound up breaking the sound support, until I undid the damage. It's twitchy. Plus, Wine has to do sound emulation as well, to get it from 'Windows' sound system, to 'Linux'. That's why I'd go the Cedega route...makes alot of that painless, and *MIGHT* make your problems go away. Your mileage may vary, though....

Pulse doesn't replace OSS, it replaces ESD. ESD wrapps sound for applications and routes it to the sound system (ALSA or OSS). And from what has shown recently, OSSv4 preforms better than alsa. I personally haven't used Pulse, but if a program can directly interface with ALSA why not do it? Wine has ALSA output so why not disable pulse? It has known problems with wine, you would be better off disabling it for wine. Or just remove it and get esound Heck if your soundcard supports hardware mixing why even use a sound server?


Oh and really, on that ALSA point of view, it's still a HUGE debate in the linux sound community of which is better and which should be standard. The new OSSv4 has mixing, running multiple sound programs now is no problem. It has better volume control, better latency, and higher audio quality. Now that they have released it for open source I hope to see more programs go back to OSS, as it would improve sound drastically.

"Do not seek counsel from the elves, for they will say both no and yes."

I actually just had read up on all of this due to the want to test OSSv4 out. Well I did, and then wine fuxored up so I did searching for wine autio problems and found out what pulseaudio was all about then put the hate down on it. Honestly though, If you have direct interface to ALSA you don't need a wrapper such as Pulse, so why use it? I've never had programs lock up sound, and almost every thread about sound problems I've seen are pulse based. I understand what they are trying to do, but honestly if anyone had paid attention to OSSv4 we would have noticed that it does some of the similar functions and better.

http://igneous.ws/ossv4-is-awesome/ I also share similar beliefs to this author, WHY do we put layers which increase problems and latency? I say screw per-app volume, I can change master? Yes, I'm good. Every program can use audio at the same time, without problem? Audio never breaks? Yes? I'm good. It seems the more complicated we have created these problems the worse it gets. I know some people might think the app controll is nice, but honestly I hate it. I hated it in Vista, I hate the idea of it in Linux. I may be stubborn or something but most of the time app volume control has angered me in various bad ways. And to make it worse, if you never use program volume control then why have it? I hate programs that have it as a dependency even though you just need the libs, and then you can remove pulseaudio after installing!?!?!?

So ultimately my suggestion for wine would be to disable pulse or don't use it for wine.

Oh and so you know... http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManage...rsion&iId=3731

You should really read the Wine HQ and the AppDB more often before you post.

A--I apologize if I offended you with my last post. I am extremely new to linux as I have been using it for just a few weeks. I thought I would go to the old and wise ones before I started mucking up my system.

B--I do read Wine HQ and they said same as you, disable pulse.

C--Suse's site tells me not to mess with pulse and I am confused.

D--Every suggestion I've read on how to do so refers to Ubuntu, Red Hat, or every other distro but suse.

E--I do not play Counter Strike. I do not use Steam.

F--Please refer to my original post and tell me how to kill it without trashing out the rest of my system like everyone else seems to think will happen.

Oh no offense!!! =D Try what wine HQ does, OR do winecfg and don't have pulse checked, check alsa. If you want another option try OSSv4 and remove pulse all together!!! Installing OSSv4 isn't hard, it would be a good project if you don't build stuff often. You don't have to build it either, they have packages for it at the main site.