On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:30:56 +0000 (GMT)
Jim Lesurf wrote:

In article , Jim Price
wrote:
On 14/02/13 22:56, Davey wrote:

Indeed. I have no idea what Jack is, but it is there,
in /usr/lib64. But what happens otherwise if I remove it?


Jack is handy for music production, as you can often use some of the
features of your sound card which might not be supported by ALSA
alone.

I continue to wonder about that. I haven't ever use 'Jack'. Never
needed it, despite recording things as well as playing and processing
them. But my impression is that it has been developed as a 'user
friendly' sic way to do things which its creators *think* people
"can't do" with ALSA.

However the "can't" may mean "don't know how" rather than "physically
impossible" - mainly, perhaps, because making sense of ALSA can be a
real struggle. And may involve hand-editing files, etc, which is
hardly user-friendly if people want to dump the old image of Linux =
"Typing arcane commands into terminals". Plus documentation that only
makes sense when you've hacked your way to a solution. ...erm IMHO.

Indeed, I keep feeling that people have invented and added extra
"sound systems" as an alternative to understanding and documenting
(and making programs to ease) doing this using ALSA.

The result now seems to be a pile of 'different' sound systems, which
can easily interfere with simple user choices that don't fit the
auto-magical assumptions of an install. Hence Jack, Pulse, etc,
become a PITA for many rather than a solution. And make some people
feel it is a hopeless task to do something as simply play music as
they prefer.

So far as practical, I'd advise people to avoid Jack, Pulse, etc, as
they just complicate issues for basic uses. As far as I'm concerned,
Pulse is a virus. But as usual, YMMV. ;-

2p ended. :-)

Jim


As I mentioned partially above, I looked for jack on my PC, and it was
listed by Synaptic as not installed, in any guise. Yet I did a
'whereis', and found:
jack: /usr/lib/jack /usr/lib64/jack
And the terminal tells me that it is not currently installed, just like
Synaptic. From this, I deduce that there are some files loaded, but
they are not in use.
Which leaves me still with the question:
What does my Audacity fail message mean?
--
Davey.