G'day from Australia!
Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2017 2:39 am
Hi everyone. I live in the Hunter Valley region of NSW, Australia. (Wineries, horses and coal mines 
)
Internet (ADSL) speeds are a (bad) joke... however we are expecting fibre in the area soon.
I am reasonably computer literate. I basically taught myself to put computers together, load OS, programs etc. I have predominately been using Windows OS and completed mid-level courses in Networking and Multi Media. I became OK with the command line and basic reg tweaks, usually by following what others had done.
But, I have always wanted an alternative to MS and have been fascinated by Linux. While I have been a "tinkerer" of Linux distros now for over 10 years, I am not a programmer and found that the distros I tried "almost worked", but were confusing enough for me to shy away from dumping MS and going "all in". I have a dozen or so old distros (mostly Ubuntu) on disks that ended up being shelved.
Today was an exciting day... About 12 months ago I loaded a Ubuntu version on my desktop PC and everything seemed to work pretty well with my hardware except - no sound. After hours of searching the web for answers, re-loading OS, file changes etc. I gave up. A few months ago I decided to try Mint 18.1 Cinnamon, after reading it might be a bit more user friendly to MS users. (Yep I know it's built on Ubuntu) Again everything worked pretty well except - no sound. Again the hours of searching the web and trying different fixes proved fruitless.
So a few months ago I decided to try it on my old laptop - it worked! I had been playing with it on the laptop for a while and decided that if I could get the sound to work on the desktop PC, I could finally get rid of MS. So a few weeks ago I loaded Mint 18.1 Serena onto a separate SSD in my desktop PC and kicked it over. Same result - no sound.
So, I have been "testing" Mint without sound and trying to find the solution. Now I am a very seasoned web surfer, so I know that searches for some things can be a bit "hit and miss". Today I found a thread (I closed the page and now I can't find it again..) but it turns out that when you run the GUI of Alsamixer it doesn't show that the bloody thing is set to "auto-mute" by default! I opened it in terminal and disabled the setting and taadaa! It now plays sound! Glorious sound! Well my playlist anyway...
There are just a couple of niggly issues to go that I haven't explored yet, but over the next couple of days I will take a look at the programs I have for MS and when I'm happy - Windows 10 is toast!
I have Windows 10 on one SSD and Mint on another SSD in my desktop PC. So when I get rid of Windows I will have a whole (256GB) SSD to play with other Linux distros!
Today was a good day.
Cheers,
Dan
)Internet (ADSL) speeds are a (bad) joke... however we are expecting fibre in the area soon.
I am reasonably computer literate. I basically taught myself to put computers together, load OS, programs etc. I have predominately been using Windows OS and completed mid-level courses in Networking and Multi Media. I became OK with the command line and basic reg tweaks, usually by following what others had done.
But, I have always wanted an alternative to MS and have been fascinated by Linux. While I have been a "tinkerer" of Linux distros now for over 10 years, I am not a programmer and found that the distros I tried "almost worked", but were confusing enough for me to shy away from dumping MS and going "all in". I have a dozen or so old distros (mostly Ubuntu) on disks that ended up being shelved.
Today was an exciting day... About 12 months ago I loaded a Ubuntu version on my desktop PC and everything seemed to work pretty well with my hardware except - no sound. After hours of searching the web for answers, re-loading OS, file changes etc. I gave up. A few months ago I decided to try Mint 18.1 Cinnamon, after reading it might be a bit more user friendly to MS users. (Yep I know it's built on Ubuntu) Again everything worked pretty well except - no sound. Again the hours of searching the web and trying different fixes proved fruitless.
So a few months ago I decided to try it on my old laptop - it worked! I had been playing with it on the laptop for a while and decided that if I could get the sound to work on the desktop PC, I could finally get rid of MS. So a few weeks ago I loaded Mint 18.1 Serena onto a separate SSD in my desktop PC and kicked it over. Same result - no sound.
So, I have been "testing" Mint without sound and trying to find the solution. Now I am a very seasoned web surfer, so I know that searches for some things can be a bit "hit and miss". Today I found a thread (I closed the page and now I can't find it again..) but it turns out that when you run the GUI of Alsamixer it doesn't show that the bloody thing is set to "auto-mute" by default! I opened it in terminal and disabled the setting and taadaa! It now plays sound! Glorious sound! Well my playlist anyway...
There are just a couple of niggly issues to go that I haven't explored yet, but over the next couple of days I will take a look at the programs I have for MS and when I'm happy - Windows 10 is toast!
I have Windows 10 on one SSD and Mint on another SSD in my desktop PC. So when I get rid of Windows I will have a whole (256GB) SSD to play with other Linux distros!
Today was a good day.
Cheers,
Dan
