Ubuntu Sound Card HELL !!!
Hello people passing by my blog. Today I finally broke down and decided to fix my sound card issues with ubuntu linux. Let me start by saying that I was using a creative sound blaster audigy SE and the sound was fine but as hard as I tried there was no mic recording on audacity. I just want everyone to know that the only reason i bought the new card was because I beta-ed Microsoft Vista a year back and believe it or not, my SB Live card was concidered LEGACY HARDWARE and wasn’t supported. This meant no sound on vista and grey hair. When the beta ended, I switched to ubuntu fiesty faun and all was better or at least i thought it was alright.
Installing a new OS can lead to little problems with sound and video but most of it is just a little tweak to alsamixer or jumping into a file and adding a few lines. On Ubuntu most of the problems can be solved with apt-get or synaptic package manager, but this isn’t where my problem was solved. I tried everything and the bottom line was that booting up my XP partion got the mic working, so last night I gave up and created my first podcast on Windows XP … i wanted to cry.
Then in the middle of the night i had a dream about making another show but this time on ubuntu and something clicked. I remembered that i had a SB live card in my closet from when i needed to upgrade for Vista. This was my shining light and guiding saviour back to completely using Linux. After installing my Live card, I loaded up audacity and alsamixer and started recording sound without a hitch.
Final thought for this blog entry would be that any Linux user using a sound blaster audigy SE card should think twice before tinking with the mic or any recording because alsa does not like this card. Perhaps its just too new but the thing has been around for a while and alsa usually does not discriminate, so who knows.
Keep a look out for my new all linux made audio blog coming soon!
-Jonathan
Open Source Guitar Hero!
Have you ever thought about buying a gaming console just to play one or two games? A great example would be that I only purchased a ps2 so I could play the GTA series, which still kicks! I also purchased a Wii right when it came out and i still feel a little wiitarded for getting one so earlier in the console race just becuase of the lack of quality games designed for the wii. After a week or so you feel bad for spending the money but its not the end of the world. Well if you wanted to buy an XBox 260 or a ps2 just to play Guitar Hero, then Frets on Fire will knock your socks off!
Frets on fire is a great Guitar Hero like game that has a HUGE library that one can download from any Torrent site. This includes all the songs that are on the console version. The game is open source, so copies can be download for Linux and mac. The great part of this game is that a Guitar Hero guitar is not needed ….. you can use the keyboard! This game is awesome!
so go here http://fretsonfire.sourceforge.net and get your copy now!
What plagues linux pt.2
Hello all of you who jumped on this site because I put linux or Dell in my blog. I know people everywhere are asking if I fixed my girlfriends machine yet and the answer is yes. I used ndiswrapper and with the extracting idf and sys files i was able to get the card working on her laptop. So major victory for me and all of the linux community because this install passed the infamous girlfriend test! Hoorah!
I should mention that card works but sometimes i need to go back to terminal and reset it or delete a file to get my card working. I’m not sure why but ndiswrapper doesn’t work right away so thats annoying. I had a friend look at it and we’ve decided to write a nice script to reset it during startup but i haven’t done that yet.
Overall I love linux, ubuntu, and the opensource community but hate when stuff breaks down, is hard to install, or just doesn’t like me.
-Jonathan
what plagues Linux!
I’ve recently installed Ubuntu Fiesty Faun on my girlfriends laptop (Dell inspiron 1000). Things went ok during the install but afterwards i couldn’t get online. I plugged it in from my router and bingo things went as planned, but when i put in the wireless card there was nothing. So i decided to install ndiswrapper to get the wireless card working and nothing happened! This is pissing me off because i know in about five hours its gonna be pissing her off!
So what to do now? I’ve emailed my local lug group and they pointed me to various sites and recommended things that are not out of reach but time consuming. I’m getting frustrated with certain linux problems such as hardware support and drivers. I had a similar issue with my own computer with a Sound Blaster Audigy card that was almost brand new! I acknowlege that Creative isn’t really giving out new drivers for their sound cards and Alsa does a good job, but its a pain in the ass!
So if anyone out there wants to comment and step me, and the rest of the world, through installing a dell wireless 1350 card in a Ubuntu 7.04, i would be happy. I should mention that i’ve been using linux for a few years but some things are just unbearable, and this is one of them.
Jonathan
