Quick update: I got Gentoo back up and running. For those interested, you can inject alsa-driver and use the built in version from the kernel. It works great, and no compiling errors. The only potential future issue is ALSA wont be as easy to upgrade, but it works well so I don't see a need for an upgrade until I upgrade my kernel again anyway. This install was so smooth I amazed myself.
Comment: This thread turned into a why/why not Gentoo thread, in which someone commented on not using it on a desktop machine. My question is why the hell not? Its rock solid, and once its set up my grandmother could emerge most packages with no problems. They are addressing the signing issues, which is an issue with RPMs and DEBs anyways, because they dont have everything on the CDs. If you want firefox, for example, you need the unsigned RPM off the net. Plus MDK10 still won't make my sound work out of the box, so I end up kernel-compiling anyways. Then theres the issue of binary-bloat, 1500 drivers on my machine that I don't need. Blah. Not only that but upgrading is trivially easy, and as was pointed out, I emerged a new KDE while sill using the old one. All this, and Gentoo is still a relatively young distro. There is a reason Gentooers love it so much :) </gentoo plug> --Nick On April 12, 2004 03:37 am, Curtis Sloan wrote: > On Sat April 10 2004 21:56, nick wrote: > > On April 10, 2004 02:22 pm, Curtis Sloan wrote: > > > I don't use Gentoo, but I do compile the most recent ALSA source > > > releases in addition to the kernel driver (can't get enough bleeding > > > edge ;-) > > > > Which would be a good reason to use gentoo. ;-D > > Touch�. :-) I am not opposed at all to using Gentoo; my two outstanding > reasons for not using are: 1) I only have a PIII 450MHz w/ 256MB RAM and > compiling WINE alone takes two hours, and 2) I can be unsettlingly lazy > sometimes (i.e. untested binary packages are my friends sometimes). ;-D > > Feel free to refute either of these reasons and you may convert me, > especially point 1. ;-) > > <snip> > > > > Does having an ALSA USE flag on Gentoo mean for the kernel, or for > > > compiling ALSA separately? Sorry for not being "hip" and in-the-know > > > about Gentoo. ;-D > > > > Actually it tells emerge [gentoo package manager] to add in ALSA support > > to packages which have it as a compile-time option. That in turn causes > > ALSA to become a necessary dependancy, hence it gets compiled. > > Caveat emptor with me not being a Gentoo expert, but I would expect that > this is where ALSA source releases such as alsa-libs and alsa-oss are being > called upon (to be compiled). Those two packages don't require the > configured Linux kernel source to compile, but they do need to find an > already compiled ALSA driver (and alsa-driver requires compiled kernel > source :-P). So there may be a bit of a 'chicken and the egg' scenario > happening for you. Of course this is strictly conjecture, since I'm > speaking of source tarball compiles, and not emerge packages. > > > When I said I > > injected it that means I told it ALSA was installed, which it was, but in > > a different way. Kinda confusing, esp if another package needs the ALSA > > source to be able to compile. > > Maybe not a bad thing, if you did already have some alsa-lib, alsa-oss and > alsa-utils portage packages installed (compiled? What do Gentooers say, > anyway? ;-) previously. If not, that could be where things are going > south. > > I think the sometimes confusing part is that "ALSA" is now included in the > kernel (as of 2.6), but all this refers to is alsa-driver. > > <snip> > > > So I still need alsa-lib, but alsa-driver is in the kernel? > > Yup. Here's the skinny: > > o alsa-driver: available in 2.6 kernel. Available separately as well, but > requires the "configured" kernel sources to compile correctly (from the > ALSA documentation). > > This might be your problem -- the kernel sources need to be "configured", > which I translate as meaning "compiled once" (make bzImage && make modules > at least; an unpacked Linux kernel source tarball is not enough). > > o alsa-libs: AFAIK, the libs are only needed for other programs (but not > to access the driver). I really should look into it deeper. Caveat > emptor, but I say think of it as a *-devel type RPM. > > o alsa-utils: are really only for setting your mixer settings -- > especially the first time, since all channels are muted by default. Maybe > other programs can work around this by using the OSS Mixer API -- I'm not > sure. > > o alsa-oss: OSS compatibility library. It's still important to have OSS > emulation from ALSA for a number of programs (a lot of id Software games > come to mind ;-). > > So, at the end of the day, you still need all four, but nowadays one is > provided via the kernel (alsa-driver). > > HTH, > Curtis > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca -- Nick W ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Registered Linux User #324288 (http://counter.li.org) MSN Messenger: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo: foolish_gambit ICQ: 303276221 _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
