Which Distro to Use?

Fred_E_Krugar · Post by **Fred_E_Krugar** » Mon Nov 28, 2011 1:23 pm

I dont mean to beat a dead horse here but I just dont know what to do.

As every one here knows that pulseaudio does not work correctly with wine........ok that is cool but when the wine developers say just dont use pulseaudio that would be an glorious thing. But as most of us casual linux users have to work around for hours just to fail then revert back to windows ( I am not doing that but I am just saying). Wine to me is a way to help linux users to get the MS monkey off their back. But with short answers that developers are giving is not helping the community. I mean after all if it was not for the people like me trying new alternatives, the wine development team really does not need to even be working on this stuff anymore. They just need to find a job working for Microsoft or what not. ( Rant over)

So could the developers please tell me what distro they are using so that I will not have all the bugs that everyone else is having. I have looked at over 100 distros and pretty much every one uses pulseaudio now. Even Xubuntu uses it now. SO if someone could tell me what distro the developers use that does not use pulseaudio natively, i would be more than happy to use it. I just want the old gnome setup like 7.04 alsa only was.

So can anyone help? Or point me to a surefire way to set up a new distro back to the good old days without pulseaudio?

tparker · Post by **tparker** » Mon Nov 28, 2011 2:43 pm

On 11/28/2011 01:23 PM, Fred_E_Krugar wrote:

I have looked at over 100 distros and pretty much every one uses pulseaudio now. Even Xubuntu uses it now. SO if someone could tell me what distro the developers use that does not use pulseaudio natively, i would be more than happy to use it. I just want the old gnome setup like 7.04 alsa only was.

I am not in any way a dev, hopefully someone else shares an opinion for
you. I see a couple alternatives. You can go with a source based,
build-it-into-what-you-want distro such as gentoo or arch and only put
on your machine what you want it to have (such as an older version of
gnome, or a gnome base made without pulse). Or you can pick a window
manager other than gnome. I may be wrong, but I think any current gnome
based distro will have pulse tightly built into it. I have not heard of
a recent one that does not, but I also have not gone looking for one.

jorl17 · Post by **jorl17** » Mon Nov 28, 2011 3:48 pm

Agreed, I find it that, after a while, you either turn to Gentoo or Arch to tune your machines to yourself. It might be a good idea, indeed.

Fred_E_Krugar · Post by **Fred_E_Krugar** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 12:00 am

I have used arch it was about three years ago. There was a pdf on how to do it step by step, now if I could only find it again.

So is pulse embeded into gnome now? I was thinking on using KDE but I think pulse has spread into it as well( correct me if I am wrong), the problem in the past with KDE was multiple monitor problems. Which is the reason I stoped using it, I believe it started with KDE 4. SO you guys think arch is the way to go. My only problem with gentoo or arch is that I am so accustomed to using (.deb).

John Drescher · Post by **John Drescher** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 9:46 am

So is pulse embeded into gnome now?

gnome-3 requires pulseaudio even on gentoo.

John

Fred_E_Krugar · Post by **Fred_E_Krugar** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 11:38 am

Well this is just Craptastic. Who is this pulseaudio group.I mean this is just getting redonkulis. Its starting to sound a little like........lets say iPod........Apple says if you want to put any music on it you have to use iTunes..........hmmmmmmm.So if ya want the new gnome.....no if and or buts you will be using pulseaudio. Now where is this love of freedom to chose?

Helmut Pozimski · Post by **Helmut Pozimski** » Tue Nov 29, 2011 2:17 pm

Am 29.11.2011 06:00, schrieb Fred_E_Krugar:

So is pulse embeded into gnome now? I was thinking on using KDE but I
think pulse has spread into it as well( correct me if I am wrong),

Nope KDE runs just fine with just ALSA. KDE (at least version 3.x)
earlier had a sound server called arts which got replaced by phonon in
KDE4 which is just a tiny layer able to use different backends.

Personally, as a distribution I would clearly recommend Debian. But this
is a matter of taste and there is not one single solution for everyone I
believe.

Kind Regards
Helmut

BobTheBull · Post by **BobTheBull** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 8:18 pm

Don't know if this helps, but I am running opensuse 12.1 with KDE 4.7.2; it is using alsa drivers and the sound works fine in Wine. I just upgraded from 11.4 where I had Civ4 installed in Wine and the sound worked just fine. I didn't do anything to make it so, I just installed Civ4 and mods just like I would in Windows and it worked. Sure it will work in 12.1 also.

BobTheBull · Post by **BobTheBull** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 9:03 pm

Did some checking and PulseAudio is installed, but there is also an alsa olugin for pulse installed. This was done by default in the install. Suse 11.X must have had the same thing, as all programs I have tried which needed alsa have worked. Don't know if this comes from the pulse or KDE group, but it works. I would think Fedora and Mandriva would have the same thing, at least if you use KDE.

Fred_E_Krugar · Post by **Fred_E_Krugar** » Wed Nov 30, 2011 10:28 pm

So has the multimonitor support gotten better on kde 4? It was horrible in the beginning, that is why I went back to gnome. But gnome has become a let down because of this pulseaudio thing.

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 12:11 am

This topic went off talking about distros not Wine with different distros. Please stay on topic, or it will be locked.

If you need to know if x,y, z works in one distro and not the other - please go to their respective forums and ask.

motub · Post by **motub** » Thu Dec 01, 2011 10:40 am

Fred_E_Krugar wrote:As every one here knows that pulseaudio does not work correctly with wine........

Actually, you may be going to a lot of trouble for no reason. PulseAudio, as installed by Gnome 3, so far is working perfectly well with Wine (1.3.33, compiled from source, no patches) on my system (Linux Mint Debian, based on Debian Testing).

I've gotta admit, I'm extremely surprised. PulseAudio was installed "by accident" (I had uninstalled it) during an upgrade of GNOME, and although I've actually downgraded most if not all GNOME components to version 2 again, I hadn't re-uninstalled PA. The only way I even noticed that the sound system had been transferred was because VLC stopped playing sound (the pulse plugin for VLC is not compatible with my version of VLC).

I've just installed 3 games under Wine (Amnesia - The Dark Descent, Fish Fillets 2, and Keepsake), and the sound works fine. I've just checked 2 previously-installed games (Arcanum and Pretty Good Solitaire, installed before the sound upgrade), and the sound (still) works fine.

I suspect that the earlier issues were because PulseAudio did not work, rather than because Wine didn't. Now that PulseAudio seems to be working correctly, so is sound in Wine.

In any case, you might just want to give it a try, and, if my experience is anything to go by, it ought to "just work" (especially if you're also using Debian Testing, to get a relatively decent version of PA/Gnome 3-- though I can't vouch for GNOME3 as such, as I'm not using it, but rather E17). There's always time to distro-hop later

.

Good luck.

Fred_E_Krugar · Post by **Fred_E_Krugar** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 7:53 pm

vitamin wrote:This topic went off talking about distros not Wine with different distros. Please stay on topic, or it will be locked.

If you need to know if x,y, z works in one distro and not the other - please go to their respective forums and ask.

Ok vitamin maybe you can help you are a moderator right? So tell me what distro s is the devs using which is the original question.

jjmckenzie · Post by **jjmckenzie** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 10:30 pm

Fred_E_Krugar wrote:
vitamin wrote:This topic went off talking about distros not Wine with different distros. Please stay on topic, or it will be locked.

If you need to know if x,y, z works in one distro and not the other - please go to their respective forums and ask.
Ok vitamin maybe you can help you are a moderator right? So tell me what distro s is the devs using which is the original question.

I am an admin, developer and I do not use Linux. Developers use whatever they have at hand. Some use Ubuntu, some SuSE, some MacOSX, and some use Solaris. Thus a developer could be using Linux or UNIX to develop on.
The point is that you should use a Linux distribution that YOU are comfortable with that supports Wine. Ubuntu and Debian both have Wine packagers (they are not a part of the project) that build and package Wine for those particular distributions. I forgot, some use the RedHat variants like CentOS or Fedora. The latest versions of most Linux Distributions should have package files available from the distribution's package system (Ubuntu has a ppa for Wine Stable and Wine Development) or has a third-party built package available from the Download link on the WineHQ page. The Wine project does not and cannot build/maintain these packages.

Again, get a distribution,become familiar with it and use Wine with it.

James

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Sun Dec 04, 2011 4:42 pm

Fred_E_Krugar wrote:So tell me what distro s is the devs using which is the original question.

Whatever they like. There is not a single distro that all Wine developers used. Make your choice.

As I thought this didn't really go anywhere other then ppl saying my distro is better then yours. Closing the topic.