[sldev] The secret of voice on linux.

[Nite Zelmanov]

On Sat, 15 Mar 2008, Alan Grimes wrote:

> The Sekrit to get voice to work on linux is make ESD work. To do that you 
> need to go start the daemon process... On gentoo, if you have it installed,

  Running Ubuntu 7.10 and my experience has been that sound is finicky and 
voice doubly so. ESD does seem to be the way to go. Here's a breakdown of 
what I've tried:

-Kernel runs ALSA modules including OSS emulation

-1.19.1 (1) auto chooses OSS according to the console and has functional 
but degraded sound out of the box (music is to choppy to listen, but UI 
and general sounds can be heard). Voice doesn't work, console shows "AL 
lib: alsa.c:342: Could not open playback device 'default': Device or 
resource busy"

-README-linux-voice.txt says that voice uses ALSA. Okay, lets ditch OSS 
emulation.

-export LL_BAD_OSS=x  gets me "ALSA audio output initialized OKAY" Cool

-Actually, it's not cool, in ALSA mode all of the normal sound in SL is 
broken (no audio at all) but lo and behold, voice works!

-I see Alan's message and figure okay lets try esd. "ESD audio output 
initialized OKAY" Yay.

-Sound effects work but are delayed (esd buffer settings maybe?). Double 
yay, music is listenable! It all sounds great. Triple yay, Voice works!

  Hopefully this will help other linux users become fully 
audio/voice capable in SL.