On Saturday 18 Sep 2004 14:20, Wyatt M. Portendt wrote:

> So that means that I can't choose my hardware based on features and
> performance?  I have to use only hardware built for Linux?  Sorry.  I just
> paid about 1600 dollars for this computer and the hardware is fast and
> reliable under XP.  It literally screams.  I don't want to buy new hardware
> just to play with my operating system.  :(  I appreciate the fact that

Look at it this way. What if I say windows is useless as it won't let moe play 
my playstation games. Windows is crud, it won't install on my Mac. Windows 
won't run on my new intel 64 PC and so forth. 

You choose the hardware to suit your software. This should always be true. You 
choose mac hardware to run OS/X, or playstation to run PS2 games and so 
forth. Obviously in your case you bought windows hardware for windows. That's 
fair enough. It makes the linux install a little hard for the moment. 

So you have hardware with windows drivers and your options are to:

a) use windows for the moment.
b) ask the hardware manufacturer to make a linux driver like they made one for 
windows. 
c) wait for a nice volunteer to write a driver for linux. It may even already 
exist thanks to that nice guy who did it for you for free.
d) write it yourself. 

> there are nice guys who write the drivers for free.  Maybe they'll have
> time to get around to mine eventually, or maybe it's out there already. 
> Just gotta get the specific one for the specific versions of all my
> specific programs, I guess.

That's it. You're right on track :)

It's unfortunate, but the reality of the situation. The linux guys don't get 
the info they need to write the drivers and don't get the cooperation, so 
they have to guess or try things or reverse engineer or whatever. The latest 
stuff is always a problem. 

You will find that any new stuff you have today will be linux compatible in 
the near future for the most part...

> It's a different way of doing things, to be sure.  I just always assumed
> that you told the operating system what hardware you had and it told the
> programs in turn.  This is going to take some getting used to.

The driver situation exists in linux and windows. It's just that they write 
the windows drivers for you :)

> Well...I've looked and looked.  I don't see Kmix anywhere.  KDE 3.2.1
> I looked through every item in the program list (looks like the start menu
> in windows) but I can't find Kmix there under any menu.  Maybe the
> unspecified module *is* here, sitting on my computer.  Danged if I've seen
> it and danged if I'd know it if I did since I don't know what it's called
> and haven't found a reference in Google to it as yet.  I still have about a
> half million hits to go through, though.

Show us the pci device list. Likely if the sound card is not detected at all 
you won't have kmix to find...

> If I'm understanding you all right, the OS has nothing to do with sound,
> correct?  The sound has to be configured individually for every program
> that needs it?

Nope, the sound is handled by an OS kernel module. The sound device is then 
available to the apps in user space.

tim

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------
  Tim & Therese Fairchild
  Atchafalaya Border Collies.
  Kuttabul, Queensland, Australia.
---------------------------------------------------------
 Email       mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Homepage    http://www.bcs4me.com
 Photos      http://www.pbase.com/amosf
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