I installed Jaunty this morning, and like every time, I was nervous because I’m always afraid I’ll get too confident someday and end up doing something I can’t undo that will fuck up my files so badly that I can’t get them back. This time, I even hacked an extra 20GB off my XP partition because I use it so seldom, and my Ubuntu partition was getting crowded. Not only that, but I put /home on its own 60GB partition so that when upgrade time comes around again, I won’t have to copy all of my stuff; I can just install the new OS and tell it where to find my /home, complete with all of my user configuration files. I did a clean install this time, since I’d upgraded from Hardy to Intrepid (which went okay, considering all of my customisations), and it went very well. I’d read a couple of horror stories (okay, more like rants) about PulseAudio in Jaunty, but it looks like I got away with it again. All I had to do was change the default 2-channel to 6-channel, just like I did before. After I finally remembered to enable the mediabuntu repos (it’d been so long that I forgot!) and installed libdvdcss2, I tested a DVD with real 5.1 surround sound, which was just fine, and also an mp3 with just stereo, to make sure it was duplicating channels to give me 5.1, which it did. Dual displays were no problem, either, after I’d enabled the Nvidia driver (the FOSS driver did give me video and the correct resolution, but wouldn’t do Compiz or TwinView). The default orange Human theme still isn’t my thing, but the wallpaper was nice this time (Intrepid’s was some gawdawful cave painting-looking thing), and although I had a custom Ubuntu Studio last time, I’m okay with the default US theme (plus my Neutral cursor–god, I love that theme) for now. I’ve left desktop effects enabled as the default (not full-on everything Compiz does, but some), though I usually end up turning it off in the end. Since I’m a dumbass, I forgot that my Conky config file was hidden, and in /home, so I didn’t copy it, but that’s all right; I have one similar enough, and I’ll add the GPU stuff and extra mount points to it later; it won’t take long to do. Oh, yeah; I also have to delete the custom configuration for my Weather screenlet because it appears to be confused. I almost don’t want to copy all of my /home files over because my OS is so nice and neat, and my /home so uncluttered. It’s my stuff, though, and even if I don’t need half of it, I’ll keep it just like I do always. Perils of a PC packrat!
Oh, and when I forget and have to look it up again, if PA is giving just two channels and needs to be changed manually (I think there’s a GUI now, but I never looked), then…..
cp /etc/pulse/daemon.conf /etc/pulse/default.pa -t ~/.pulse/
This is the “easy way”, which works for my sound card. Never had to try the “hard way”…don’t want to!
gedit ~/.pulse/daemon.conf
Find these lines, uncomment default-sample-channels and change the 2 to 6
; default-sample-format = s16le
; default-sample-rate = 44100
; default-sample-channels = 2
Restart PA and good to go! 🙂
