mr56k

I have a Dell E521. It has a 5.1 Surround Sound compatible card on the motherboard. I'm currently using just headphones that work and sound great. I have some Dell 5.1 speakers on the way. Is there anything tricky to get these working under linux? Other then plugging in each speaker correctly do I need to do anything else? Under system-prefs-sound under mixer it does show front, surround, center, and a few others. Figured I would ask before they get here in case I have any problems .


"PS" Just wanted to say these forums have made the jump to Ubuntu from Windoze a breeze. Thanks again !

kulturloseramerikaner

Hi, welcome to Linux! I'm pretty new here myself, but I ran into an issue with my surround running a Soundblaster Audigy Z2s.
It should work OK in theory; Unbuntu did do a great job of finding my sound card and getting it up and running with the ALSA driver but I didn't get anything from the rear channels, just the fronts and the sub when playing music, whereas I had Windoze Media set to give surround for all sources. If you end up having this issue, you'll need to edit the ~/.asoundrc file, or create it if you don't have it on your system. Fortunately, this is one of the easier configuration settings to customize for your system. Open up a terminal, and type:

gedit ~/.asoundrc

Then scroll down to the bottom of whatever happens to be listed there and add this section, substituting the (indent) for the tab key:

pcm.!default {
(indent)type plug
(indent)slave.pcm "surround51"
(indent)slave.channels 6
(indent)route_policy duplicate
}

What this will do is duplicate the output of the front channels to the rear if you are playing from a stereo source, so that you can play with your fader and delay settings to achieve the surround sound effects and make use of your 5.1 regardless of the source. You also can check that Ubuntu found the correct sound card by typing in a terminal:

sudo asoundconf list

You should see something along the lines of:

Names of available sound cards:
Audigy2
V8237

To set your default, type in the following, substituting "example" for the device you want to set as the default:

sudo asoundconf set-default-card example

So for my setup, I put in: sudo asoundconf set-default-card Audigy2

Remember that everything you do in terminal will be case-sensitive.

That should be it. Hit us up if you have any other questions.

mr56k

Thanks a lot. Cant wait to try it. Surround sound will be here this Friday.

I noticed you also run PCLinux. How do you like that? Any better or worse then Ubuntu in your opionion? I was thinking about giving it a go. Thanks

kulturloseramerikaner

I love it; it is a very clean looking and stylish distro. I actually started off my Linux experience with Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper) on my desktop and ran that for a week or two, then found PCLOS and removed Dapper and installed it. The install is rediculously easy and stuff that you get into a lot as a new Linux user such as Synaptic are right there on the desktop; also for a recent Widoze convert, I found the KDE desktop to be pretty straightforward and relatively familiar. There is also a great forum for PCLOS users and a great community behind it. But, and this is a big but, I had an absolutely nightmarish time getting my ATi graphics card working. Long story short, it just never did. I tried installing the proprietary ATi Linux driver, could not get a successful install of it using the advice on the PCLOS forum or this one. The generic ATi driver that was available for PCLOS on Synaptic would allow me to go only to 1024x768, and it would not support Beryl or Compiz at all. I ditched TR3 and installed TR4 once it came available and hoping that they would have taken care of those issues but it didn't. It got to where someone just told me "ditch the ATi and get a GeForce card." Uh, no, I'm not going to shell out another $250 to get my "free" operating system working properly, that's not a solution. So I removed PCLOS from my desktop after Feisty was released and installed that. It worked right off and I haven't looked back; Beryl runs perfectly and my monitor's not an issue, though I keep PCLOS on the laptop as it works perfectly there. It doesn't get used much as the Windoze partition, full of proprietary stuff I can't get rid of, takes up most of the drive. I figure it's probably better to have a couple distros anyway, with different DE's, as I am very enthusiastic about learning Linux, as you are.

abhishek456

I got my Surround sound working for my card the fallowing way(I didn't worked on default. Made some changes)

__________________
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ryptyde

ATI is a pain in the Linux as you have found out. I have 3 nVidia cards and the most expensive was just under $100 US and that was a GeForce 7300 GS also have a 6200 and a older 420 they have no problem handling desktop-effects using Beryl/Compiz.

I have the Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 4 and a Creative 5.1 speaker system all speakers adjustable and working on my Fedora Core 6 install. Picked up two more SoundBlaster Audigy 4's on clearance recently.
I hear that the Creative XFI card isn't supported yet in Linux so I'd steer clear of that one.

abhishek456

you can check compactable hardware list for various distros here

Linux-drivers.org - Linux Hardware Compatibility Lists & Linux Drivers

and

Compatibility Database - Hardware


Creative XFI is presently incompatible with Linux
Creative says they're releasing a closed-source driver in the third or fourth quarter of 2007

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mr56k

Thanks for all the input guys. Yea im counting down days to my speakers arrive.


Just wondering about the PCLinux because im pretty happy with Ubuntu right now but wondering if there is something better. I really don't wanna go through and try each one either lol. I have tried Mandriva,Fedora and now Ubuntu. Ubuntu is the best by far for me outta those.

kulturloseramerikaner

I'm quite happy w/ Ubuntu, and if you are too, I really don't see any need to change over.

marcnz

Hi,
I have a Dell Dimension 9200 with all the top options.
I never managed to install the following distros:
Fedora Core 6
Mandriva One Spring 2007
Xandros Desktop 4

I managed to install:
Suse 10.2 (but ends up freezing)

and the only one that I can run very well with my two 24" Dell monitors in full resolution:
Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty.

I needed the 64 bit to get all my 4GB of ram, but there is still not enough support/applications for 64 bit. So I have installed the 32 bit version and only have 2.8GB Ram (grrr).

I need to use citrix for my work and the only way I could work was to install the free VMWare server edition and install my Windows XP in it. So I have constantly the Linux for all my fun and especially no blue screen of death, and my VMWare with XP for my work. At least, I don't care it XP freezes or gives the BSD now. Just a click on the reset guest and there it comes again.

From my virtual XP, I get all my files via the samba server on Ubuntu, mapped network drives for "my documents".

Thumbs up for Ubuntu. Really the only one so far that was able to deal with the Dell Dimension 9200 desktop.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,