[CentOS] Skype on CentOS 5 - my microphone settings are incorrect

Sun Mar 16 16:39:10 UTC 2008
Lanny Marcus <lannyma at gmail.com>

On Sunday, 16 March 2008, Niki Kovacs <contact at kikinovak.net> wrote:> 
<snip>

Niki: Thank you, for everything you wrote! Question: Last night, for
reasons completely unrelated to this problem with the microphone audio,
I downloaded the .iso for the Knoppix Live CD and I have that CD. Can I
troubleshoot this microphone audio settings problem, with one or more
utilities on the Knoppix Live CD? If so, which ones?

> One other thing. You mentioned several mixer apps, IIRC. I've seen some 
> Linux installs of the kitchen sink type, where people installed just 
> everything available on the DVD. Result: you get everything from GNOME, 
> KDE, XFCE, plus any other available window manager. As a result, you 
> also get several concurring sound systems: ALSA, OSS, Arts, and IIRC 
> there's something called 'esound'. It's a bit like folks installing LPR 
> and CUPS at the same time. When you have several pieces of software 
> attempting to talk to the same device, there will inevitably be conflicts.

My belief is that what you wrote is dead accurate, with regard to many things
and once I get the Sound working properly, I will try to get rid of what I know I am not using.

However, with regard to web browsers, as one example, I find that having both Firefox and
Konqueror is necessary at this time. Firefox, with the settings as liberal as I can make them, does not
work properly for me, when I access Gmail on the web. Konqueror, which Gmail shows is not fully supported
and does not allow access to all Gmail features on the web, works much better than Firefox there.

A former Supervisor and Colleague, who uses Ubuntu, has no problem using Gmail on the web, with a later version of Firefox.

OT: From what you and Dag wrote about Firefox 3, I will upgrade from CentOS 5 to 5.2, when I can get the DVD!

> I've been a long-time Slackware user, and Slackware has one guiding 
> principle: KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid!

I respect anyone who uses Slackware and I believe strongly in the "KISS" idea.
> 
> On my CentOS desktop, I have *one* desktop environment: XFCE. One sound 
> system: ALSA. And one mixer app: alsamixer (I uninstalled xfce4-mixer).

I install both GNOME (which I use 95% of the time) and KDE when I do clean installs. Once, I had
GNOME corrupted, and I used KDE, temporarily, to keep going. KDE has many many more things than GNOME.
I always use K3b and there are some other KDE Applications and Utilities that I use occasionally.

> So what you could do to make things easier: establish which sound system 
> and sound mixer app you are using. And then get rid of the unused ones.

After I find the solution to the problem, I will try to do that!

It is my understanding and belief that Front Ends (GUI or Text based) that modify Linux Configuration files
may do so in different ways. If the file is simple, I modify with a Text editor. One experience I had, with
system-config-display (?) was that it said it was writing a new Xorg file, but, in fact, it did not. Someone else posted 
in this ML and Johnny or Jim said to use the command with -- rewrite or something I can't remember, as I write this.
One of the things about Webmin, is that supposedly one can use it to modify Configuration files, or do it manually with a
Text editor, without screwing things up.

I will keep working on this microphone audio problem and if I cannot solve it, then I will post in the alsa-user at lists.sourceforge.net
as Anne suggested yesterday, in 2 or 3 days!

Thanks again! Lanny