sound from multiple apps

[Milan Bouchet-Valat]

Le jeudi 12 juin 2008 à 17:40 +1000, Luke Yelavich a écrit :
<snip>
> > I'm just a little appalled at the state of audio support on Linux (I believe
> > this issue is not Ubuntu only); I was trying to have a conversation on the
> > google chat (from within the browser) and since the chat has audio alerts,
> > mplayer refused to play audio (while the chat is open). Just a little
> > example of broken audio support. I do not know the cause, nor the solution
> > to the problem, I wonder how ubuntu is trying to become mainstream and have
> > mysterious issues, such as this.
> 
> What does Google Chat use? Flash? Java?
It appears to use Java. So this may be a bug in a JRE.


> If you are using Ubuntu and GNOME, then its likely that whatever you are using is grabbing the sound device, and PulseAudio, the sound server for the Ubuntu desktop is unable to access the device, since whatever you are using in Firefox has exclusive use of the device.
> 
> Its hard to say more without knowing what browser technology google chat uses. If you could tell me what it uses, then I will be able to more quickly help you work out a solution, or a workaround.
Gezim, I guess you should open a bug against the package gij, and we'll be able to investigate more there. You've run into a very particular bug, and in Ubuntu the sound system is not so bad as you may think for desktop uses - actually it rocks, it's just that Java support may not be very well integrated to the rest of the system. Thanks for reporting anyway.


Cheers