Notes on conventional desktop tools

[C. Scott Ananian]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 2:48 PM, Martin Langhoff
<martin.langhoff at gmail.com> wrote:
>  - Flash pays a hefty price for its refusal to use Xv. Don't install pulseaudio.
>  - Skype 2.0.0.72 works reasonably well once you set the right
> microphone input. Latest Skype (2.1.0.81) doesn't play well with our
> ALSA implementation. We aren't alone in this, various chipsets/drivers
> are affected similarly -- your voice is distorted into a growling
> mess, see https://jira.skype.com/browse/SCL-638 -- someone with
> serious alsa trickery and magic may be able to massage .asoundrc to
> work around the issue, I could not. This is recent - previous release
> 2.1.0.47 has good audio but video is corrupt.

I think you'll have more success with the latest skype using pulseaudio.

Yes, pulseaudio is awful.  But it's what's being adopted upstream.
Pain now == less pain later.  (But you probably want to use the
pulseaudio plugin called idle something or other (IIRC) to close the
audio device when it's not being used, otherwise your indicator light
will be stuck on.
  --scott

-- 
                         ( http://cscott.net/ )