MIDI through soundcard? (And a keyboard problem)
 

I am trying to play MIDI files through my soundcard and not an external device. I have several files I would like to play, but I can't seem to get MIDI to work. I can play mp3's fine, just no midi. No program seems to work. Kmid won't find a device. I've downloaded a sound font in case I need one. I haven't been able to find a procedure on what to do. I am using an ALSA driver.

Also: does anyone know how to get my keyboard to quit needing 2 keystrokes to type ' or "? I don't need ümlauts and I have the extra keystoke to make a quote. I have US Keyboard selected (not Int'l). When I selected my MS natural keyboard, that's when it started to do this, and I went back to a generic 104 but it still does it. I haven figured out how to work with keyboard mapping yet. I sure would like to make that WINDOWS key a Compose key.

I'm a newbie to Linux and I like it so far, but this configuration business is going to have to be improved if it's ever going to be competitive. I've had to learn to make Java work, have ACPI work, and other things. This needs to be working out of the box or at least have a page on the desktop that says: "So you want to view web pages with Java?.." etc. Just my thoughts. I'm used to Mac OSX so the commandline doesn't scare me, but I never had to configure anything with it except cron, because the defaults were lame.

Thanks!

Re: Midi

If your card has a REAL midi interpreter chip, then usually Linux supports it out of the box.

Many cards use emulated Midi interperters which are handled by Winblows.

Re: Keyboard

It sounds like you have the wrong keyboard or layout defined. This is handled in several places and if the selections are out of sync, you can get strange results.

Re: Acpi

Huh?

ACPI is turned on by default on 10.1 now if the installer thinks it's safe.

You may need to enable the service, but this is trivial.

Re: Java


Set up your urpmi sources then

urpmi java (or is it j2re)

Nothing complicated about this.


Re: Configuration

I see nothing particularly wrong with Mandrake's "configuration business" other than some things remain uninstalled on a typical system, thereby making things appear to be much more difficult than they are.

To make your system "easy" to administer... (again after setting up your urpmi sources see: www.zebulon.org.uk)

urpmi wizards

And look for a new slew of Wizards in the MCC.

urpmi webmin

And then

https://localhost:10000

Will get you to a nice Web based management interface for Linux.