Intrepid Sound Problems

[Mario Vukelic]

On Fri, 2008-11-14 at 18:15 -0800, David Fox wrote:
> For some reason, w32codecs was not installed in Intrepid,

It is never installed by default and it is not in the regular Ubuntu
repositories because it is illegal in most jurisdictions.

>  and apt-cache policy w32codecs returns (none) for an installation
> candidate, 

I dunno what some people's problem is with accessing medibuntu (except
medibuntu sometimes being awfully slow at times -- they ask for
donations, let's give them some), but it works fine for me. 

apt-cache policy w32codecs
w32codecs:
  Installed: 20071007-0medibuntu3
  Candidate: 20071007-0medibuntu3
  Version table:
 *** 20071007-0medibuntu3 0
        500 http://packages.medibuntu.org intrepid/non-free Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status


> so that means to me that it can't be installed, and I
> believe I have all the restricted / medibuntu repositories for
> intrepid enabled, 

You *believe*? How about checking?

> Pulseaudio is not enabled 

Did you disable it? Because otherwise it probably is.

> and nothing connects to it here, and that
> might be a gnome thing, and as far as I can tell, I don't need it.

Unless you sometimes fancy 2 sound sources being able to have access to
the sound device at the same time. Most people have cheapo soundcards
that do not have hardware support for this, and this is where pulseaudio
comes in. (Alsa could also mix in software, but Pulse can do much more)