Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , John
Legon
wrote:
Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , John
Legon wrote:
Jim Lesurf wrote:
[snip]

assumptions!

A computer operating system worthy of the name shouldn't be making
assumptions, but should identify the hardware it is running on and
configure itself accordingly, presenting options to the user which are
relevant to the hardware.

Its a nice theory... but reality tends to be too complex.

The reality is too complex for Linux, but not for Windows. In my own
installations of Win2k and XP on several computers (including the laptop
in question), I have gone to the manufacturers' websites and have
downloaded device drivers and utilities specific to the hardware. There
has been no guesswork or making of assumptions - the OS understands the
specific hardware and works the way it is intended to.

Alsa on my laptop, however, has clearly failed to identify the hardware
configuration, and provides mixer controls which serve no purpose. It is
purely by chance that I can get a result at all - by unmuting "LFE".

So the hardware may have more than output for audio, and the software have
more than one way to play it. The user may want to hear things like 'bongs'
when emails arrive added to music, or they may not. And so on.

The chipset may well have outputs that are not implemented, and Windows
running on the same laptop provides no support for them.

So it is inevitable in all by the most trivial cases that the installed OS
and user software will have to either make assumptions *OR* the first time
it is installed/run it will have to ask the user to answer a long series of
questions that must answer. And they may not at that point know what
options they'll want.

So you almost unavoidably have a situation where the install either tries
to guess 'what most people will want' - and get it wrong in some cases. Or
face new users with a list if questions they may be unable to answer.

By default most people want to start with a fully functioning system -
bongs and all! They have the option to turn them off if they want - but
no Windows user would expect to have to fire up a terminal program in
order to toggle a mute control for an obscure surround sound channel
which isn't supported on the machine - just to get basic functionality
for sound whether for alerts or playing music or videos etc..


That said, problems like this can't always be avoided due to the sheer
range of detailed circumstances. Manufacturers can often dodge this by
pre-installing and matching hardware with settings, but that may
*still* provide a setup that doesn't do what a given user wants
out-of-the-box.

What happens with Windows, of course, is that the manufacturers supply
device drivers, which define valid options for the hardware in question.

That may be true. Whereas Linux simply adds the needed code at that level
into the Kernel/modules. However that isn't really the problem. Although of
course commercially sold *packages* of OS+hardware+user software will have
some of this done by the maker.

Linux developers can attempt to add the code but often aren't privy to
the detailed hardware specifications, and can only achieve partial
success by tinkering or hacking Windows drivers etc.
[...]

But as yet it isn't clear to me if that's the cause of your difficulty. May
simply be that you need to do something straightforward, but based on
learning more about what you are trying to use.

Your machine may be 'playing' audio, but via an output you aren't
actually using. Or require a simple change like an unmute.

My laptop effectively only has one output, which goes to the internal
speakers by default or, if a jackplug is plugged in, to the line output
socket. There is no digital output.

What does 'effectively' mean? On my laptop the speakers are separate to the
headphone socket, and so is the HDMI (as well as the optical output).

It's perfectly clear what I mean. There is only one audio output, which
is routed to the internal speakers unless headphones are plugged in.
There is no digital audio output, whether coaxial or optical or HDMI on
the laptop machine.

To find that in order get the audio output to work, I have to unmute the
LFE channel for surround sound, is therefore simply ridiculous.