ubuntu woes

[dfear]

Hi

Just a short rant on a few things in ubuntu that don't work properly or
as expected or are just plain daft.

Firstly most things that i have installed in my PC or have connected to
it, do work like the usb card reader i just plug in - worked flawlessly
and was asked if i wanted to import the photos into an album. This sort
of feature is one of those little things that impress me.

Now onto the negative things. 

First thing i  that didn't work properly at first was my tv card. I have
a fairly ordinary Hauppauge WinTV-GO tv card and use tvtime to watch tv.
I struggled to get it to search for channels and only managed to get it
to work properly once i installed the xawtv package.

next one. I have a Logitech USB Headset which i want to be able to use
with sip clients and skype. The headset shows up in hal-device-manager
but i can't seem to get it to work and not sure want to do to get it to
work. My primary sound device on ubuntu is my Soundblaster Live Platinum
which uses /dev/dsp and the secondary audio device i have connected to
my PC is the aforementioned Logitech USB headset, which i assume,
rightly or wrongly, would use /dev/dsp1 for playback and recording. The
headset previously worked on mandrake 10.0 and used /dev/dsp1 for
playback and recording; *and* worked with skype. Skype on linux uses oss
and only uses audio devices connected to/using either /dev/dsp
or /dev/dsp1.

next. I have a Trust Compactscan 19200 USB scanner which is not working
properly.  I know it uses a mustek driver in sane and appears in
hal-device-manager as a Mustek ScanExpress 1200 UB. If i run xsane or
kooka as a non-root user it fails to detect the the scanner, but if i
run xsane or kooka as root user (using sudo) it detects the scanner. So,
to be able to run xsane or kooka, i have to run it as root; and when i
do run it the quality of scanning is terrible and have had no luck
trying to improve the quality. I have used the scanner with other
distros and scans that i have done are pretty good and of good
quality.    

finally. does anyone know how configure my soundcard (Soundblaster Live
Platinum) to output all 4 speakers (i.e. surround sound). I have Labtec
LCS-2415 4.1 surround sound speakers and sound is only output to the
front 2 speakers and not to the rear 2 speakers.


Thanks in advance, if any one can help with these issues and problems.

-- 
-----------------------------------
Dave Fear :: dfear at blueyonder.co.uk
Skype: dpfear
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