My somewhat minor Helena issues

[DonnaFontenot]

A few things I've noticed over the last couple of days while using Helena. (NOTE: ALL PROBLEMS SOLVED, AND ALL WERE NON-MINT ISSUES).

1. [SOLVED] (Ignore the rest of this particular problem, because it turns out, the problem was due to me trying out Empathy as a replacement for Pidgin. Empathy didn't play well with others.) ...... Some apps refuse to close, and I have to Force Quit them. They always closed fine in Gloria. Two in particular that I can think of at the moment are Neverputt and Oceanix. My concern level (1-5, with 5 being the most concerned): 1

2. [nope, not solved after all] (The solution below to edit default.pa by adding tsched=0 seems to have solved this, but I'll use the PROBABLY, just in case it returns.)(The problem returned.) Sound is once again a problem, on and off, but I assume it's because of the pulseaudio upgrade. One of the reasons I loved Gloria so much was because my sound problems went away when I moved from Ubuntu Jaunty to Mint Gloria. Now, with Helena, they are back, although they are different problems than before. I basically just can't have two sounds happen at the same time. For instance, if I've got some music playing, and then go load some sort of Flash video with sound, the videos's audio re-peats-peats-peats-peats like-like-like-like this-this-this-this. If I turn off my music, and then close out Firefox, and restart Firefox, I can then hear the Flash video sound just fine again. Granted, I don't particularly have a need for having two sounds going at once (kinda distracting), but the point is that it used to work fine, and now it doesn't. My concern level: 3 (just because it's fairly annoying, though not critical)

3. [SOLVED] For some reason, I can't get my printer scanner to work, when it did before just fine. However, I do need to replace an ink cartridge (waiting for it to be delivered any day now), so that may be the problem. If not, I'll be more concerned than I am now. My concern level: Currently 1, but will be 4 if installing ink doesn't fix it. UPDATE: Turns out, this is an upstream XSANE problem. In my case, I needed to add a couple of lines to the /lib/udev/rules.d/40-libsane.rules file. For anyone with a Brother MFC210C who followed the old instructions and used to be able to scan but no longer can, here's a last bit of instructions to make it work in Ubuntu Karmic and/or Mint Helena. Add the following two lines
1. Open "/lib/udev/rules.d/40-libsane.rules" file.
2.Add the following two lines to the end of the device list. (Before the line "# The following rule will disable ..."):
The lines to be added---------------------------

# Brother scanners
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04f9", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"

3. Restart the OS.

Anyway, I'm not particularly looking for solutions here - rather, I'm just posting some things I'm seeing happen, in case it's of any use to anyone. My feeling is that some of these issues may go away as incremental updates happen, so I'm not overly concerned for now.

[rich_roast]

I know you're not actively looking for solutions, but fwiw fiddling with pulseaudio's settings (found in /etc/pulse) can help resolve stuttering problems. From their wiki,

If you have playback issue (stuttering/crackling), have you tried adding tsched=0 in your default.pa

There are other settings that can be fiddled with in daemon.conf, which may also help - try setting the mixing method and synth rate and whatever else to the defaults here, if you have the patience, remembering to back up Mint's somewhat modified daemon.conf somewhere safe first. I looked about for a ready made conf but couldn't find one, sorry. This approach fixed problems with games and sound for me in Gloria, although somehow they've not appeared yet in Helena, which is good for me, I guess.

[DonnaFontenot]

Thanks, I'll fiddle with the settings, then. I will be sure to back things up first though, just in case.

[rich_roast]

I've just encountered awful stuttering glitches when playing Vega Strike, so I'll be likely modifying that file too. I'll post any settings I find helpful.

[DonnaFontenot]

Sadly the sound stuttering returned.

wanting to kick pulseaudio around a little tonight.