XFCE system sounds... or lack thereof

[SinfulSaint]

Hey all!
Need to ask you all for some assistance regarding XFCE system sounds.
I'm a XFCE 18.3 and 19 (vmware) user of late.
Got all .ogg sounds present at default location. However, I get no system sounds for the sake of it!
No login, no logout... no empty trash... nothing.
Sound works with multimedia and YT though. Strange.
Appearance - Settings - Event sounds both checked.
Went to Settings Editor -> xsettings -> SoundThemeName. Change to freedesktop lets say. No avail whatsoever.

The one and only I get is with Sound Settings - Output devices when moving the slider left-right I hear *pop* and that's all there is to it.

Any help much appreciated and thank you for your attention.

[MrEen]

Hi SinfulSaint. Try moving from the Output Devices tab all the way to the left and you should be on the Playback tab. You should see System Sounds on that tab. Adjust volume and check if muted there.

[SinfulSaint]

Hey,

No, not muted there. System sounds at 100%. Dunno what to do really.

[MrEen]

Found something worth trying. In the menu, select Settings > Appearance > Settings tab > check the box next to Enable event sounds.

[MrEen]

I found a post on the Xfce forum by Mint member MtnDewManiac that references this post on the Ubuntu forum regarding system sounds. I actually never wanted those sounds, so can't offer much more. I am pretty sure you'll need to log out/in for changes to take effect when trying to get this working.

This is a sneaky way to make MtnDewManiac check this thread

The above quote will hopefully get someone that knows this stuff tipped off to this thread. I think his posts on the Xfce forum were about 4 years old, so he may have forgotton all it took. This was the original topic.

[MtnDewManiac]

I think his posts on the Xfce forum were about 4 years old, so he may have forgotton all it took.

I have. I've also lost all interest in system sounds in the time since then, which means I didn't keep any notes or links about it. And my skill level is "copy and paste other's instructions."

But good luck to you on figuring it out.

Regards,
MDM

[xfrank]

Lack of sounds is an old problem of XFCE. I tried for years to solve it without luck, and I much like system sounds. The only XFCE distro with working system sounds by default is MX Linux. I don't understand why XFCE developers don't care about system sounds, they are useful and beautiful.

[MtnDewManiac]

The only XFCE distro with working system sounds by default is MX Linux. I don't understand why XFCE developers don't care about system sounds, they are useful and beautiful.

So, obviously, those Xfce developers you're mad at cared enough to allow for the things . I suspect that the default is to not enable a bunch of noise because these kinds of things annoy the living daylights out of a lot of people (for a variety of reasons).

As you, yourself, observed, Xfce can make noise for system events. ToZ, on the Xfce community support forum, has helped many people enable them. Due to the fact that linux, unlike offerings from Microsoft, is not ONE entity producing ONE series of operating systems, the process to enable system sounds can vary from a couple steps to lots - and may involve installing files that your distro's developer (NOTE: These people are NOT controlled by the Xfce developers...) either didn't think to include by default or made a conscious decision not to, et cetera.

I just did a quick web search (xfce system sounds), set the time period of the results to only show ones within the past year (thinking, reasonably, that instructions for doing this on Xfce 4.8 might not be useful), and saw how-to articles listed on the first page of results (including videos).

I am assuming that you have already searched THIS forum, since common sense tells me that instructions posted here would be specific to Mint. So I visited the link for the first distro I saw.
https://arcolinux.com/how-to-add-system ... inux-xfce/
We use different package managers, I think, and probably other things will be different. But it clearly told me to enable system sounds via the Appearance application(?). And it mentioned using sound-theme-smooth. A search for that gives me this:
https://www.xfce-look.org/p/1187979/

As mentioned in that thing's "description" text:

there is a text file included in that archive called "how to install on xfce.txt" that shows how they can be played on a Ubuntu based OS.

Mint is an Ubuntu-based distro. Why not download that archive, open it, find the aforementioned file, and follow the directions? I glanced at them, and they look to be fairly simple. And the person that put that archive together included a LOT of sounds.

If this works for you, great. If not, perhaps any error messages you receive (either directly or via some system log or other) will help you figure out why the noises aren't working.

Just a thought.

Regards,
MDM

[SinfulSaint]

Found something worth trying. In the menu, select Settings > Appearance > Settings tab > check the box next to Enable event sounds.

Already done and said in my post #1

@MtnDewManiac - Thanks!

[MtnDewManiac]

I couldn't found the post on the Xfce forum

The link at the end of the fifth post in this thread works, and the thread appears to be reasonably current (and, coincidentally, ToZ mentioned, in post #59, the Smooth audio theme that I linked a few posts up)

Regards,
MDM