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Mar 14 2009   4:36PM GMT

SLED 11 RC 4 first glance



Posted by: John Little
sled 11, skype, suse, desktop, suse linux enterprise desktop, Sound, recording

For everyone who is looking for the next release of the SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop SLED 11 RC 4 is available here. While I usually prefer CentOS my current contract is to support SLES and SLED.

It has some pleasant surprised compared to recent releases of Ubuntu and and even openSuSE 11.*. Sound and sound recording work out of the box for the snd_hda_intel sound module. I’m referring here mostly to Skype users who have suffered numerous problems with the microphone and recording when using this module. I installed the Skype static application, adjusted the settings in Skype and it hasn’t failed.

This version also includes Moonshine, the Windows Media player for Linux. This makes it incredibly easy to play your WMV files for those of you who suffer people sending you files in that format to play.

What is not included are the development files for many of the applications. gcc and make are installed by default just not the development files. Working around this is simply a matter of adding the openSuSE 11 or 11.1 repository. You should then be able to get the *-devel files that you need. Note that you might need to downgrade the base application and minor version number. I haven’t broken anything doing this though.

In summary you are probably going to like this version of SLED particularly if you are a heavy multimedia user. I know it has certainly solved a few of my problems in that area.

Have fun!

-j

Learn something new
Unlearn the obsolete

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Jan 24 2009   7:42PM GMT

Skype and OpenSuSE 11.1..



Posted by: John Little
skype, opensuse 11.1, Sound, mic, microphone, pulseaudio, libpulse0, alsa

As I’ve alluded to in previous posts Skype, OpenSuSE 11.1 64 bit and sound capture (the microphone) have not been playing nice with each other on OpenSuSE 11.1. Sound generally worked but if you wanted to talk, well, good luck with that.

I think maybe I’ve found a solution though. There are some things to to keep in mind here. The first is that Skype is a 32bit program, OpenSuSE uses pulseaudio, and that I am using a 64 bit system on an HP laptop nx6325 that uses the ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB4×0 High Definition Audio Controller. The module the sound card uses is snd_hda_intel. If you are using that module then this should work for you but ymmv.

Go ahead and install Skype. Open up the Install Software module in the OpenSuSE menu and under Installed Programs type pulseaudio. Uninstall all of it except for libpulse0. That will leave you the pulseaudio client interface for any 64 bit programs which have pulseaudio as a dependency. MPlayer comes to mind here. Conversely it may break 32 bit programs that have pulseaudio as a dependency.

Now reboot your machine. Open up the Sound module in the Yast Control Center. Adjust your sound settings so that the top 3 are Autodetect. The fourth one should read HDA ATI SB AD198x Analog (ALSA) and the last one HDA ATI SB (Alsa Mixer).

Now open Skype and try a test call. You may have to play around with your Skype settings. Mine are all set to default. If your machine becomes unresponsive hard boot it and it should be ok on the next boot. Strange I know, but it happened to me..shades of Windows :-(

With any kind of luck you should be able to use your microphone. I use the built in microphone on my laptop. If everything seems to be working properly but your not getting playback on your external mic open up the volume control from the speaker in your task bar and make sure that you have the external mic enabled.

Good luck!

-j

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