[kde-linux] KDE resetting microphone setting upon login

[Duncan]

Mark Knecht posted on Tue, 01 May 2012 09:03:22 -0700 as excerpted:

> I misunderstood your suggestion originally. To me KDE is a big
> monolithic thing, a behemoth the parts of which are not to be trifled
> with by me. That said the problem (at least initially) is kmix. I did an
> emerge -C kmix from the console and then started KDE. All microphone
> settings appear to be OK.

Good to see my suspicions were correct. =:^)  As for kde being big/
monolithic, yeah, that's an easy enough thought pattern to get into.  But 
it doesn't tend to help troubleshooting, and it's useful to remember that 
there's a bunch of different developers each with their individual 
thoughts and ideas working on kde too, sometimes.  That's actually the 
bit I have more trouble with, as it's very easy to take one kde-dev's 
thoughts on something and pin them on kde as a whole, but it doesn't 
necessarily work that way.

> The next tests will be to exit KDE, come back in again, make sure things
> are ok, maybe emerge kmix again, see if it's messed up again, etc. I'll
> do that later today after the market closes. Right now I'm in the middle
> of a bunch of trades.

AFAIK there's an option somewhere, that sets whether kmix resets the 
volume on kde startup, or not.  But as I said, it has been awhile since I 
had it installed, and of course it's possible they changed it along the 
line, too, which might explain why it started working differently for you.

> QUESTION: Might you be able to suggest any other Open Source mixer to
> replace kmix? I find I need a desktop mixer due to my work in VMs all
> day long where every app and every machine has different volume levels.

Personally, alsamixer has worked well for me, for years.  I can run it in 
a konsole window when in kde, or from a VT when I'm not in X, which is 
nice, and I actually find it clearer to deal with than kmix in some ways, 
tho I liked kmix for its ability to have one (configurable) control set 
as master, and being able to just pop that up from the tray, when 
needed.  But whenever I want to actually see what controls are available 
and change the more complex options or adjust more than one channel, I 
tend to prefer alsamixer.

Since I like alsamixer, it works equally well in a VT or a terminal 
window, and it tends to be installed wherever alsa is used, which is 
pretty much everywhere on Linux, I really haven't had much need to go 
looking for anything else.  Of course I know about kmix as part of kde, 
but other than that, I haven't needed to look, so I haven't.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman