Folks,
As some of you might remember, I have experienced hell with Fedora sound ever since, well, FC3 or maybe earlier. Every time I complained, I was told to file bug reports, which I did, and nothing much was done about it.
I am an old time Linux user & hacker, been using Linux since 1996. It's now 2008, we're about to release F9, and sound is still a big mess. This is not about filing bug reports, it's a systemic problem that must be addressed.
The long and short of it is that sound works sometimes, and then stops working. It just does. Maybe from an update, but it just stops working. Then you start fscking around with all sort of settings, and _maybe_ you get it working again. Maybe not.
But every time there is any change or you reboot the system, it is a Russian roulette if the sound will still work. It is believably f-r-u-s-t-r-a-t-i-n-g.
For example today: sound stopped working 2 days ago through my regular speakers (the USB headphones always work!). This morning there was another big pile of updates, so I decided to reboot the system, maybe that would fix it. 2h(!) later, I have no sound, and instead of working, I'm writing a long message to fedora-devel :)
Cause: pulseaudio refuses to make use of the built-in (Intel) sound card. And I can't figure out how to force it! BTW: I use Gnome, I have ESD checked (that's an obvious label!) so pulseaudio is enabled.
It will just use the USB headphones. If I use Rhythmbox, it uses the default desktop output, and that goes to my USB headphones.
Audacious on the other hand, behaves like this: * if output is set to ALSA:default, it will go to my headphones * if output is set to PulseAudio, it will stutter like crazy * if output is set to ALSA:hw:1,0 it will go to the system speakers
So built-in sound works just fine, just PulseAudio refuses to use it.
Can we stop breaking working systems with every other set of updates?!? How can one depend on F8 for regular day-to-day work if w continue in this fashion?