Nice surprise , w.r.t. linux hardware compat.

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Feb 01, 2007 at 05:42:17PM -0500, ted leslie wrote:
> 
> i needed to assess the ability a group of people that is 500-1000 that
> run a live linux distro, that may run into problems with usb chip set
> compat. (specifically new dell 521 line that has a usb bug).
> 
> So i order four  pci usb expansion cards from tiger today,
> and am ready to plug them in and see if linux might work with them,
> 
> I pick up the Trendnet 5-port usb 2.0 pci card,
> 
> right on front it states:
> 
> Compatibility: "Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP, Linux, Max OS"
> 
> man!! even shown before Mac OS!
> and it can't be because of alphabetical order cause Windows was listed
> first. 
> 
> 
> i also got three usb sound adapters to check out, linux recognizes all
> three by name, but in my SLED sound config panel it doesnt see them, but
> alsa utils does, but i have yet to figure out how to get suse to work
> with them
> 
> got a Plextor usb external 16x DVD as well, ran right away and i did a
> 10MB/second DVD sio transfer, but main thing i have to check is if it
> can be booted from, as some of my linux users , maybe 1-2 in 100 are
> getting new mobo's with chip sets that have dropped pata drivers or
> something and screwed up the ability to do a linux live distro boot, so
> i am hoping if the mobo supports boot from usb (and in turn dvd on usb
> bus) it will fix that.
> 
> will be interesting to see out of the 3-4  usb/pci cards i got, if they
> all work and how well.
> 
> now if i could just figure out how to get the usb sound adapters to work
> (they get detected, and i can talk to them via alsamixer, etc), but i
> need for them to be "automatically usable" from apps in suse and
> that isn't happening for some reason :(
> 
> one of them on detect sets up /dev/audio1 /dev/dsp1 /dev/mixer1 which
> makes me think if my internal sound card is disabled it will assign
> itself the base /dev/audio /dev/dsp and just work, but 
> be nice to figure out how to use a usb sound adapter and a builtin one
> at the same time.

You can create a .asoundrc for the user to control which device to use
by default.  Or you could make sure to load the usb audio driver before
the onboard audio driver, assuming the usb audio is always plugged in.
Selecting which audio device to use is always a bit of a pain.

--
Len Sorensen
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