Why not Mint LXDE for old boxes and Netbooks with Skype?

[igorzwx]

Dear friends!

Skype does work well on very old boxes (of 2001, for example) with small RAM.
RAM and CPU is not a problem for Skype.

It makes sense, I believe, to have two editions:

1. Mint LXDE Alternate Install CD - LXDE, ALSA, Esound (without pulseaudio) + Skype

2. Mint LXDE Alternate Install CD - LXDE, OSS4 (without pulseaudio) + Skype

USB images for netbooks, of course.

Why Alternate Install CD ?
http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/ubunt ... es/jaunty/
"The alternate install CD allows you to perform certain specialist installations of Ubuntu. It provides for the following situations:
... installs on systems with less than about 256MB of RAM (although note that low-memory systems may not be able to run a full desktop environment reasonably). "

The second edition (with OSS4) might be ideal for very old boxes (old sound cards, no HDA).
OSS4 means minimal CPU usage, excellent sound quality,
and it seems that virtually all ancient sound cards are supported by OSS4.

For Netbooks, the universal solution might be ALSA + ESound (without pulseaudio)

Skype works well with ALSA and OSS4, and it seems to fail to work with PulseAudio

Bug #362203 in pulseaudio (Ubuntu): “Skype high CPU use on 9.04 ...
Yes, using pulseaudio with skype in 9.04 gives a leak of memory, but fortunately it is possible to avoid using pulseaudio with skype. ...
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/362203

Bug #362203:
Skype high CPU use on 9.04 using pulse (and audio recording/sending delay >5sec)

[Husse]

I'll move this to the suggestions forum
We can't really have more editions than we have as our resources are stretched to the limit with the ones we have
However a LXDE edition is (slowly) on its way

[igorzwx]

Does it mean that such ideas are not welcome?

[emorrp1]

what made you think that? Husse just moved it to the suggestions forum, where other people can vote on it. The only thing limiting this idea is the resources, it first needs someone to step up and volunteer to make an LXDE CE release, which is a lot of work.

[igorzwx]

Hi!

I have enough reasons to believe that some of my ideas are not really welcome,
especially those about the removal of PulseAudio.

You see:

1. Many users want to use Skype.
2. Many users want to have sound working.
3. Many users may even be a kind of audiphiles.

They may try Ubuntu, then Mint, then something else,
then Mac, or Windows.

[emorrp1]

well, in the case of removing pulseaudio, you're welcome to suggest it, but don't be surprised if Mint sticks with the Ubuntu base, because changing anything as crucial as sound management would require shouldering the entire maintenance for it, so there would have to be a very good reason. If the only reason is that skype doesn't work great then a) skype is a proprietary app, so we can't fix anything that goes wrong anyway b) not everyone uses skype and c) the latest release of skype supposedly supports pulseaudio, so there's no need to change anything for Helena. Personally, I manage to use the default skype by just making sure I don't have flash on in the background, and there's also the skype-static-oss packages which I'm told just work anyway. It's not that your suggestions aren't welcome, it's just that you need to provide more compelling reasons, and even then Clem can still decide arbitrarily since it's his distro. If there are as many people that *need* this as you claim, and Clem refuses, then there're enough people that one of you could create a new skype-friendly distro based on Mint.

EDIT: just thought I'd point out that yes, I am aware that OSSv4 can do many of the things pulseaudio is meant to do without the additional overhead, and that when most people say OSS is rubbish, hence the need for alsa+pulseaudio, they are probably referring to OSSv3 However, being technically superior is not necessarily sufficient.

[igorzwx]

QUOTE: "because changing anything as crucial as sound management would require shouldering the entire maintenance for it"

It is not crucial at all.
ALSA is simply a kind of trojan, or rootkit.
OSS4 is the same sort of thing.

If I am not mistaken, in Arch Linux and Gento, you can install OSS4 from official repositories.
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/OSS

Thus, we have two options:

1. a script for removing PulseAudio and installing ESound
2. a small repository with OSS4 package

This is about the freedom of choice, first of all.
Freedom solves all problems.

[emorrp1]

This is about the freedom of choice, first of all.
Freedom solves all problems.

Agreed, as I said above, if this is as much of a *needed* feature as you claim, then someone who feels the same way has the freedom to fork Mint, or provide the scripts you mention, but that does not mean that Mint *should* by default change it's sound manager. As for alsa being malware, that's just preposterous, and sound management is a low-level thing that is not easy to replace, hence it's crucial.

[DrHu]

I have enough reasons to believe that some of my ideas are not really welcome,
especially those about the removal of PulseAudio.
You see:
1. Many users want to use Skype.
2. Many users want to have sound working.
3. Many users may even be a kind of audiphiles.

..especially those about the removal of PulseAudio..
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=48385
http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa ... 7&tstart=0
Pulseaudio is likely to improve and seems to be the distributions' preferred choice (Ubuntu), so it is likely to be better developed
--suggesting also that alsa be replaced with oss, doesn't seem a great solution either. There have been lots of complaints about pulseadio, but probably no more than there were about alsa (when it was being used instead of oss)

1. Many users want to use Skype.
Skype isn't as useful in Canada, where there is no local skypein phone # available, and the kludge is to use a USA phone # and maybe did (direct inward dialing ) broker..
http://share.skype.com/sites/business/2 ... lable.html
--they (skype) finally got onto that SIP thing, at least they have a beta now
http://ekiga.org/
Of course there is always ekiga available

2. Many users want to have sound working.
Probably everybody, since most either have built-in sound or a sound card, and might like the tunes while using the computer, your own selections or a streaming radio station..

3. Many users may even be a kind of audiphiles.
That is more of a hobby, and if you are serious, you may not even use a computer
--whether anyone who uses digital compression technologies can be considered an audiophile or not, I would find debatable. They may have no personal history with audio sources other than fairly poor sound quality *.mp3 files

[igorzwx]

QUOTE: "but that does not mean that Mint *should* by default change it's sound manager."

Exactly! From practical point of view, ALSA should be, perhaps, a default choice. There are many reasons for this.

To ensure the freedom of choice, there should be an easy way for users to get the "advanced" PulseAudio,
or "deprecated" OSS4 into their boxes.

QUOTE: "As for alsa being malware, that's just preposterous, and sound management is a low-level thing that is not easy to replace, hence it's crucial."

You can call ALSA or OSS4 how you want: "malware", "trojans", "advanced", "ill-designed", or "deprecated",
but their nature and essence do not depend on their names.
In essence, they are rather rootkits
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit

I do not mean, or course, that both ALSA and OSS4 are malware.
If you want to remove ALSA completely, you have to recompile the kernel.
And there are no reasons for the removal of ALSA, moreover, it can be utilized with OSS4.
Temüjin revealed a cool hack for this:
http://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... ion-4.html

In any case, you have to blacklist ALSA modules and reboot, before installing OSS4.

QUOTE: "sound management is a low-level thing that is not easy to replace, hence it's crucial."

I cannot agree with this. Perhaps, you may try to install OSS4, following this howto:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenSound

And then we may discuss in detail whether it is easy or not.