On Sunday 26 July 2009 22:29:32 Bill Davidsen wrote: > The scary thing is that you don't see anything wrong with this picture, > seven volume control, mixers, and device selectors, and also two config > files. Have you ever visited a radio station studio or a TV studio? Do you know how many mixer tables and boards are there, and how complicated they can be? I, for one, would *want* to have a volume control and mixer app for every sound card I have on the system, and in addition another set of such apps for every sound source app I use. That way, I can fine-tune all the playback/recording I might wish for. If you want simplistic setup (the one-volume-knob-for-all setup), go install Windows and click the small speaker image in its system tray --- a single slider will show up for you to turn the volume up or down. That is simplistic. Fedora (and Linux in general) is about ability to *have choice*, and that comes with the price of complexity. One could also ask the same question for the X window system --- why do we need a full-blown network-capable multi-user multi-output multi-this multi-that video server? An average user has one graphics card, one monitor, and doesn't use X over network. So one could say it would be better to have some lightweight graphics server that only does the typical stuff, while advanced users could install X optionally. But this did not and will not happen in Linux, at least not in Fedora, because Fedora users *like* to have a full-fledged complicated server as default at their disposal to tweak as they see fit. Think pulseaudio. Think X. Think sendmail. Think apache. Think selinux. Think udev, hal, pam, ssh... All these complicated servers have more simplistic alternatives, but these more simplistic ones also limit the user's ability to configure complicated setups. And having this ability is what Linux is all about. Imagine someone who has trouble setting up resolution or other parameters in X for his particular hardware. And he comes to the list and bitches that X is bullshit, way too complicated, lacks documentation, and should be installed only optionally, for users that have a need for it. Would you support him and advocate the removal of X from the default distro? I know I wouldn't. Ditto for pulseaudio. It does have a steep learning curve, but so does X if you want to mess with it. And please don't tell me that X has only one config file. Best, :-) Marko -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
