Lily’s Blog, Dragon Absconded!
Baking Until I Drop

You thought I forgot about Linux, didn’t you?

Well, a while ago I trashed my linux install (I may have posted about it, I don’t recall) and had Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora Core installed on my desktop, but only the last one, Debian was bootable (and even that took some finagling). So, I still had major sorting out to do with all the partitions and files and unifying them and getting rid of the bad /boot and such. A month or so before my brother, sister-in-law and niece came, I backed up the files, wiped it all and installed a fresh Debian Lenny. I got wireless working and everything was pefect. I didn’t bother deal with audio because…well, something had happned to the speakers in the interim so it wasn’t necessary.

A couple weeks ago my sister returned my powerbook (hopefully for good). It’s been acting very slow. Things take long to load and programs to switch. I had plans of installing linux and linux alone for a while now so, I backed up all my files (you try backing up files on an 80GB harddrive from another 80GB harddrive…*sigh*). And then…installed Debian Lenny and got the wireless working and yay.

Well of course the audio wasn’t working out of the box. I think I had to install alsa-base or alsa-tools or alsa-utils or something.

But even then the mike wasn’t working.
I wasn’t surprised.
I don’t think I ever got the mike working.
But I figured I would try. Some people seemed to have reported their mike working. Things have changed. Even though I can’t skype from LinuxPPC, I could at least dedicate some time getting the mike working so I could record dear niece when she feels like it.

So, I did some googling and found this from a iBook G4 user on Ubuntu. He or she said that nothing recognized his built-in microphone until he installed gnome-sound-recorder (aptitude install gnome-media) and then he launched that and selected Mic as the source and it recorded audio.

Furthermore, all the other programs he was trying to use to record sound also now recognized his mic.

Wow!

So, I figured it was worth a try.
I did it and wooohooo! My microphone works. Maybe I’ll upload the first audio recording from this powerbook on Linux.

I have no idea why it works and why it didn’t before.
I didn’t really do *anything*.
And his post to ubuntu was since November 2006…a year and a half ago! Oh my!

I’m thrilled.

Now, back to the linux box that I built that resides downstairs that is used by my brother and his family. Of course he wants to listen to Qur’an and lectures and such on it. He woke me up one morning looking for headphones and of course took the better of the two in my storage. Of course!

Later that day when I came downstairs it wasn’t working.
I again installed alsa-*.
And it still wasn’t working.
He had it in the wrong connector.
But…to be honest, he’d tried them all. I just hadn’t checked that he had it in the wrong one when I started fiddling.

So…sound output works.

Now, I’d succeeded with the powerbook input the night before so I installed gnome-media and other things one time. Of course, if I didn’t have speakers and headphones downstairs, do you think I had a microphone? NO!

So about a week later (ie today), I unearthed a microphone and went downstairs and plugged it in and launched gnome-sound-recorder and… RECORDED SOMETHING! and heard it playback. Maybe I’ll upload that clip too later.

ECSTASY!

And the skype test call worked too. There was nobody online that I knew with whom I could skype.

Can you believe the mics work? What’s been going on in Linux while I slept?

Of course, I may have to mess with settings and such because the feedback on the powerbook is kinda horrible. I think the downstairs computer is better but it could be because it’s using headphones and not speakers.

Regardless I am happy.
This I can manage.

Thanks!