Elive

  • Status Closed
  • Percent Complete
    100%
  • Task Type Bug Report
  • Category Live Mode
  • Assigned To No-one
  • Operating System All
  • Severity Low
  • Priority Very Low
  • Reported Version 2.x (beta's)
  • Due in Version Undecided
  • Due Date Undecided
  • Votes
  • Private
Attached to Project: Elive
Opened by jfbourdeau - 2018-06-26
Last edited by thanatermesis - 2018-06-28

FS#700 - HP Compaq 8200 Elite Small Form Factor PC Sound Card problem

Really Trying to help :-) Even if I am giving you a hard time.
Disregard message below if Elive is target at experienced Linux people.

Intro :
I was attracted to Elive because
- I heard Debian was more stable and faster.
- As a former IT guy but still not a pro in Linux (been using for years as a user on my stations) my logic is that if Ubuntu is based on Debian, it make sense that Debian would be more stable, faster ?
- And when you say that it can run on old PC, I like to hear that too...
- And the amazing GUI / interface got my attention...

This morning :
I booted from my 64GB USB Stick with Elive last version 2.9.96 on my HP Compaq 8200 Elite Small Form Factor PC

My goal this morning was to use “vokoscreen” from within ELive to do a review in french about Elive amazing interface, Look, Speed to post on my French Review web site / and LinkedIn Profile. As I am really impress by Elive look and speed and respect passionate people like you trying make ELive known to the world (world or techies/nerds or general public, it’s another discussion)

But I think more efforts need to be put on hardware compatibility and ease of configuration.

Elive Experience A : HP Stream Laptop Model 11-D010, 32 GB SSD Hard Disk, 2 GB of RAM
Hard disk was not beeing recognized (but your tweak it / fix it WOW ) and not it can be install) BUT touch pad would not work and external display was not recognized.. I know It can happen sometime with older computer. But this laptop worked well on several Ubuntu distros I tried ( sound, External monitor, touchpad, everything)

Elive experience B : P Compaq 8200 Elite Small Form Factor PC
Booted from my main Desktop station from the 2.9.96 USB stick.
- Trying to configure the sound as I wanted was complex / not easy.
- Had to tried 2 or 3 sound configuration tool to finaly have the sound go out from my Logiteck H540 USB headset but I was not able to figure out how to make the Microphone to work (so I can speak while recording my review about ELive.
- and the sound configurator were not easy to use....

As for the monitor, for the sound sound, we have different tools included in ELive to try to make things work. for a Techie guy, hummm I can deal with it... but for normal technology fan that is not a programmer or nerds, I would try to make the experience smoother adjusting our screen resolution ( one easy intuitive.. Sound, one tool or applet and easy to use)

Here is an example of a normal sound selector we see in different distros. ( see picture )

One sec... tryin to find how to insert an image here... OK I got it, exported it to Dropbox and copy the URL ( easier forum tool needed)

Closed by  thanatermesis
28.06.2018 14:31
Reason for closing:  Duplicate
Additional comments about closing:   Warning: Undefined array key "typography" in /home/elivebugs/bugs.elivecd.org/plugins/dokuwiki/inc/parserutils.php on line 371 Warning: Undefined array key "camelcase" in /home/elivebugs/bugs.elivecd.org/plugins/dokuwiki/inc/parserutils.php on line 407

#701

Admin

Sorry, I didn't understood the Hard disk part, it is correctly recognized now? you can install Elive on it now?

About the drivers for the HP laptop: the reason is that the kernel is actually a bit old (i cannot update it before the release of 3.0, so the next beta versions after 3.0 will include newer drivers), in other words: if the computer is more or less recent it can have problems with drivers, while older computers can have a much more probable drivers compatibility

I know that this can be frustrating sometimes, but there's only me that makes the entire Elive distro, maintaining insanely more than 2500 own packages, (and even the entire work with the websites: maintaining, installing, fixing, and even to write/present them, the websites work is actually a very big bottleneck in the development of Elive), what i mean is that even if wanted, it is not possible to do things faster, so the kernel (drivers) are not possible to be updated before the release 3.0, unfortunately

Trying to configure the sound as I wanted was complex / not easy.

The sound card should be configured automatically (smart detectors configures the more correct card), but seems like it was not your case, can you paste here the output of this command?

cat /proc/asound/cards

Also tell me which one is the card correct for you, i will try to improve the autodetection tool

and the sound configurator were not easy to use....

the tool is pretty simple, it basically asks you which card you want to use (i assume that you used the tool in Applications → Preferences → Audio configurator), can you describe me which steps are the confusing / not easy ones? The tool also asks you which microphone you want to use if multiple audio cards are found (so like using the microphone of one audio card and the speakers of another)

About the screens / audio configurators: alright, these screenshots looks pretty nice and neat! (simple and userfriendly), unfortunately they cannot be included in Elive for the 3.0 version (different software which leads to changes that leads to new bugs & fixes). But I have noted them to make a research for after the 3.0 version, which basically to be included in Elive needs to follow some guidelines:
* it needs to be a light (low resources) tool
* should not oversaturate the system resources when/after using it (with like running daemons in the background)
* should not have big dependencies (most of applications requires gnome or kde, but Elive uses Enlightenment which is not a so standard desktop, so less applications made for it)
* it should work correctly and without bugs (you won't believe how many crappy applications with tons of issues are out there lol)
* it needs to be compatible or it needs to be hacked/modified to be compatible, with the desktop using here

Where, most of the times these guidelines are not met, I need then to write an own application for use in Elive, these applications (like the audio configurator or the touchpad configurator) are made in bash because it is simple and very fast to write (fast results), extremely light, future-compatible, user-hackable, etc... on the bad side these interfaces tends to be more simple and sometimes limited (poping up many questions instead of an interface with all or with dynamic triggers), but of course they can be improved, the only problem is the lack of time/resources :)

For example for the touchpad tool, unless there's a new application that i don't know, everytime that i have researched a touchpad configurator tool in linux i never found a reliable, featured and working one so i finally ended into write one for the final version 3.0 of Elive which was pretty needed, it includes just the needed features + some amazing ones that could drastically help the experience of the user, in a pretty easy to use interface, this tool is pretty nice because after to have been configured, it doesn't uses any resources at all and the configurations are reloaded at desktop start

PD: I'm going to do a betatest now in a slow laptop about the screens and audio configurators, also trying to record a vokoscreen with voice too :)

PD2: can you tell me the distros that includes the configurators of the screenshots? i will betatest them for the applications review after 3.0

Thank you for the reports and details, these for these are nice userfriendly-related experiences that I can improve in Elive for the final release :)

Admin

Ok so, these are the results of my test:

There's 2 different screen configurators, both are included in purpose, we have the default screen configurator for Enlightenment (in enlightenment preferences) which is this one: http://main.elivecd.org/ss/display.php?image=e-5b3257052e7142.81765427.jpg

And we have the arandr screen configurator tool: http://main.elivecd.org/ss/display.php?image=e-5b32584f0f42c1.21689889.jpg

The first one is light and integrated, it can restore configurators, but if im not wrong it has a few bugs and not a full support of configurations (like external screens, etc), also the interface is much nicer but not so intuitive about the actions. So that's why is included the second one, it doesn't restore configurations at desktop start but allows the user being able to configure their screens in any desired way in case that the first application doesn't (like connecting to a projector)

About the audio, well, my laptop has only one card so everything works correctly, also the mic was configured correctly by default in order to record (this is very tricky and not every distro has the mic with volume set and configured to "capture"), but the problem was in vokoscreen itself which had a wrong default configuration, you need to enter in the Audio tab and change "pulse" to "alsa", and select the card where the mic is included, then the video records correctly with audio. For more details about the mic volumes and configurations you have the "mixer volumes configuration" in the audio application menu. Tell me if your default mic configuration is wrongly set, because:

  • I'm going to see if i can include a default configuration for vokoscreen to "work directly" with mic
  • I will look to improve the audio configurator for mic (including the internal mic track to have the same volume as the normal mic)
  • Let's see if i can also ship the default volumes configurator with the "capture/record" tab enabled by default (instead of click in their preferences)
Admin

About your overall experience B, I think that everything happened because you used the "volumes control" instead of the audio configurator, the second one is pretty simple and im pretty convinced that it configured correctly your audio card since the first moment (because there's a preference in USB ones when there's multiple audio cards found) - you can know this by just playing any sound/video/music from the first startup and see if works by default

The volumes control is only for fine-tune volumes (which are correctly configured from the start, also for Mic), while your final problem was in vokoscreen application settings if im not wrong

Will continue improving some details here... I will report everything later

Tks... for your patience LOL I will make some more test later this week... Promised
JF
Just posted a link of ELive again on my LinkedIn Wall
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6417409178993729538

Admin

Thanks a lot for your post :), let's see if the traffic to the website increments a bit :-D

Just finishing big improvements:

  • more Microphone tracks included to detect and predefine volumes
  • improved smart selection of default audio card
  • autodetection of the audio card that has "Mic" tracks to use as default if the selected one doesn't has mic tracks (automatically selected for the automated mode)
  • reconfigure applications like vokoscreen (only this one needed for now) to use the new configured Mic card

And more generic ones:

  • vokoscreen includes a better preconfiguration by default
  • improved desktop integration of vokoscreen: better icon, translated menu, desktop features

Im going to build a new beta with all the last small improvements

XXX to you LOL I prefer girls ( been married 28 years, 3 boys) but xxx for those changes

Never do anything of what I ask, to please me

Only if it make sense for your and you think it can benefit most people !

TKS!
looking forward trying the new version with those changes. NO RUSH (GET A LIFE TOO.... )

Admin
Never do anything of what I ask, to please me

yeah but this will improve to every other users too :), and so if the experience is better, elive is better... only problem is the increased delay of the releases, which are really old actually lol

Only if it make sense for your and you think it can benefit most people !

yeah sure :)

looking forward trying the new version with those changes. NO RUSH (GET A LIFE TOO.... )

lol

2.9.97 will be available tomorrow :)

Admin

I just betatested the improved multiple-cards automated detection (you don't need to run this command, it is automatically run at the start of a new desktop configuration) and the result is just, perfect :-)

❯❯❯ EL_DEBUG=3  audio-configurator --auto --quiet
D: [ /usr/bin/audio-configurator +130 ] there is multiple cards found
D: [ /usr/bin/audio-configurator +211 ] we have a DAC audio card, using it as a preferenced one
D: [ /usr/bin/audio-configurator +296 ] the card MID is a good candidate for the extra microphone configuration
D: [ /usr/bin/audio-configurator +327 ] configuring a different mic source to MID

In other words: with the version 2.9.97 your audio cards should be perfectly configured by default and vokoscreen able to record directly with microphone without the need of any configuration :-D

The link I already received for 2.9.96 will be good to download 2.9.97 ? Or I need to request a new link ?

Date User Effort (H:M) Comment
watch my effort tracking timers

Loading...

Available keyboard shortcuts

Tasklist

Task Details

Task Editing