[Pkg-alsa-devel] Bug#547994: Bug#547994: installation-reports: Installation on HP Pavilion dv4t - 1300

[Kumar Appaiah]

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 12:45:53PM +0200, Elimar Riesebieter wrote:
> 1. Please put those local settings in a seperate file like
>    /etc/modprobe.d local_alsa_settings.conf. So it won't be
>    overwritten by upgrades.

Accepted.

> 2. We can't distribute individual Options for each sound chip. This
>    would be terrible to maintain.

It is rather sad that Debian chooses to not even leave an option open
for considering automatic detection of sound on desktop hardware, at
least in future. Figuring this option out took me almost an hour of
searching forums and websites (blame my inefficiency). If it takes me
that long, I bet "Joe Users" are just going to install squeeze and
give up on sound and provide negative publicity. Multimedia and
graphics are the primary cause for concern for new desktop GNU/Linux
users.

> 3  To get an overview by possible optionns read
>    /usr/share/doc/alsa-base/driver/(HD-Audio-Models.txt.gz|HD-Audio.txt.gz)
> 4. Else read /usr/share/doc/alsa-base/README.Debian.gz on how to set
>    options to a sound driver.

Thanks for the pointers. But I really found the documentation far too
technical from a standard user's point of view. From
/usr/share/doc/alsa-base/HD-Audio.txt.gz:

Interrupt Handling
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In rare but some cases, the interrupt isn't properly handled as
default.  You would notice this by the DMA transfer error reported by
ALSA PCM core, for example.  Using MSI might help in such a case.
Pass `enable_msi=1` option for enabling MSI.

I have absolutely no idea what this means, and a standard desktop user
is not likely to care the least. All he/she will say is that "Debian
Squeeze didn't play audio on my laptop". Maybe this is the stance
taken by the Debian ALSA maintainers, I wasn't aware of this earlier.

I am, by no means, criticizing your approach, since it seems to be the
only technically sane approach. But I am just sad that Debian still
won't properly enable all (seemingly common) desktop hardware.

Thanks for the proper instructions, as well as for keeping ALSA in
shape, and all the best!

Kumar
-- 
Kumar Appaiah
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