Thoughts on Gentoo

[Alexander Henry]

chip33az at netscape.net wrote:
> Do you have gst-plugins-gnomevfs installed?
>
> I haven't used Gentoo in quite a while, but Rhythmbox is dependent on 
> the gstreamer program (as are most Gnome media applications).  I would 
> verify that you have the gstreamer plug-ins installed.
>

Default ALSA works for me, as long as I set the volume up.

A suggestion may be that you don't have the right sound driver compiled 
in your kernel, then the right configuration (in Linux, not setting the 
volume in ALSA above zero is a cliche).

The RTFM's should be approached in this order, first Google the 
gentoo.org website, then gentoo-wiki, then the web itself for exact 
error messages, then try the #gentoo* chatrooms on freenet.  I've always 
landed an answer on one or another, and there's just more expertise out 
there than on the PLUG list.  I even managed to break portage once at 
2am while drunk, and got it back on track with help from the chat rooms 
to continue my emerge -e world.  (I was doing something extreme.  I 
never learned how to re-link gcc when it updates, so everything was 
emerged with a very old gcc, not to mention non-athlon t-bird settings, 
so I had to recompile everything.  I didn't start this procedure while 
drunk, it just got interrupted while I was drunk 8).

The safe flags can be found here:  http://gentoo-wiki.com/Safe_Cflags

I've never debugged sound to a large degree, so I have no suggestions 
other than the research order.

I'm trying compiles with -Os.  I'm thinking, what's faster, a loop 
in-cache which jumps and misses a few cycles in a jump, or a 1000-time 
unrolled loop which always misses cache?  I have no evidence, but hey I 
can do it, so I do :).

-- 
Alexander