Hi all, I've been on the question list for some time, and I have noticed that many people do not know how to get sound support up and running in FreeBSD 5.X. I know that re-compiling the kernel is easy enough, but there are still people not willing to do so, as I have noticed on the list. Therefor I thought it might be an idea to put sound support in the GENERIC kernel configuration, so that newbies will no longer find themselves stuck with that. The more advanced users and system administrators of servers will re-compile the kernel anyway (I think), so they might as well kick out sound support if that is not required. I hope to hear other people's opinion about this. Cheers, Jorn P.S: I am not suscribed on the stable or the hackers list, so please CC me.
[jorn@wcborstel.nl]> I've been on the question list for some time, and I have noticed that > many people do not know how to get sound support up and running in > FreeBSD 5.X. I know that re-compiling the kernel is easy enough, but > there are still people not willing to do so, as I have noticed on the > list. Therefor I thought it might be an idea to put sound support in the > GENERIC kernel configuration, so that newbies will no longer find > themselves stuck with that.Yes, it would be great to have this in GENERIC, since it is a major annoyance for x86 desktop users. An alternative would be a knob in /etc/rc.conf which would invoke "kldload snd" (or whatever). -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/
> I've been on the question list for some time, and I have noticed that > many people do not know how to get sound support up and > running in FreeBSD 5.X. I know that re-compiling the kernel is easy > enough, but there are still people not willing to do so, as I have > noticed on the list. Therefor I thought it might be an idea to put > sound support in the GENERIC kernel configuration, so that > newbies will no longer find themselves stuck with that.Something that has always stumped me about FreeBSD, especially about people moving from Linux to FreeBSD, is the belief that one *must* recompile the kernel for sound support. Why?? There are kernel modules already compiled for sound support, just sitting there on your harddrive. Why not use them?? Getting sound to work is as easy as: - kldload snd_driver - cat /dev/sndstat - kldunload snd_driver - kldload snd_pcm - and sometimes, kldload snd_<driver from sndstat> - edit /boot/loader.conf to autoload the correct driver No kernel recompile required.> I hope to hear other people's opinion about this.I'd prefer to see sound left out of the GENERIC kernel. Not all soundcards are supported by pcm, or by sbc, or by csa, or by gus, and putting all of those into the kernel will add quite a bit of bloat. GENERIC should support the most common hardware, not everything under the sun.
On Wed, 3 Mar 2004 17:03:40 +0100 (CET) you wrote:> I've been on the question list for some time, and I have noticed > that many people do not know how to get sound support up and > running in FreeBSD 5.X. I know that re-compiling the kernel is easy > enough, but there are still people not willing to do so, as I have > noticed on the list. Therefor I thought it might be an idea to put > sound support in the GENERIC kernel configuration, so that newbies > will no longer find themselves stuck with that.I think I've read more than one time about problems fitting the installation on the 1.44M floppies. Definitely a bikeshed discussion but adding to the documentation regarding kldload or a knob in sysinstall to turn on all sound modules is preferable to adding to the kernel. Best regards, Randy
Brandon D. Valentine
2004-Mar-04 14:45 UTC
Standard sbc and pcm support in GENERIC kernel?
On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 05:03:40PM +0100, Jorn Argelo wrote:> > I've been on the question list for some time, and I have noticed that > many people do not know how to get sound support up and running in > FreeBSD 5.X. I know that re-compiling the kernel is easy enough, but > there are still people not willing to do so, as I have noticed on the > list. Therefor I thought it might be an idea to put sound support in the > GENERIC kernel configuration, so that newbies will no longer find > themselves stuck with that.If they'd read pcm(4) they'd know how to get sound support up and running without recompiling their kernel. Is there something wrong with requiring that a new user bother to read the documentation? [ I do not speak for the FreeBSD project. ] Brandon D. Valentine -- brandon@dvalentine.com http://www.geekpunk.net Pseudo-Random Googlism: march is great success