Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] ALSA and Debian
From: Patrick Shirkey (pshirkey_AT_boosthardware.com)
Date: Wed Jul 17 2002 - 11:33:31 EEST
Anahata wrote:
> I've just seen one of many postings to this list about preferring ALSA to
> various flavours of OSS, and I've read all the blurb about how wonderful
> ALSA is, but when I tried to install it on Debian, first on Potato some
> time ago and more recently on the Woody 'testing' pre-release, I either
> get a shower of messages about incompatible dependencies or alsaconf fails
> to complete installation (I forget how, maybe can't see the sound
> card)
>
> I'm not too bothered as I have now got the paid-for OSS driver for my
> Midiman 2448 working again since recently upgrading to Woody.
>
To understand why we mostly recommend ALSA is to understand the
philosophy of using GNU software. You should also know that a lot of the
top audio developers are switching to ALSA/JACK so that should tell
you where the cutting edge work is being done.
> Did I install the wrong thing or in the wrong order? (there's lots of
> packages with 'ALSA' in the name)
>
Quite possibly. If you are not comfortable with installing software in
Linux/Debian then you will probably have problems at first.
> Is there some easy way of fixing the dependency complaints? I don't
> really understand the mechanism or the error message.
>
You may not have the kernel headers installed. I don't know if they are
seperated in Debian packages.
One way to get around that problem is to learn how to install the kernel
from scratch. Once you have mastered that you will have a lot more
understanding of how everything works. Sometimes I find myself
installing the kernel more than 10 times in a day to get things just
right. It helps if you save a copy of the config file to a partition
that will not get wiped if you have to reinstall the os from scratch.
(Happens to the best of us and you learn more each time :)
-- Patrick Shirkey - Boost Hardware Ltd. For the discerning hardware connoisseur http://www.boosthardware.com http://www.boosthardware.com/LAU/guide/ ========================================
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Wed Jul 17 2002 - 11:27:46 EEST