Day: March 28, 2008

Clicking of snd_hda_intel

I've installed Fedora 9 Beta on a laptop with a snd_hda_intel sound card. Every time that alsa powers up the card (from, I guess, a sleep state) I get a speaker and ear popping *click* before the sound effect. I've found Linux is being very aggressive in powering down my soundcard by setting CONFIG_SND_HDA_POWER_SAVE_DEFAULT=5 (seconds). I was playing with the timeout like this: echo 0 > /sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save So I can actually use my laptop, I've disabled the powersaving doing this: sudo echo “options snd_hda_intel power_save=0” >> /etc/modprobe.conf So, is it:

  • My laptop being crap that it can't power on the soundard with out a DC click.
  • Linux setting a much too low timeout value
  • An ALSA bug that is worth pursuing?

Ideas welcome. Richard.

ServicePack : User Interface

Quite a common use case for Linux is where PC's are installed on computers without internet access, or where internet access is very expensive. So, enter PackageKit. You insert a CDROM or USB pendrive with updates on. The following UI appears: You click “yes” and then the update icon appears as if you were online. You click “Update system” and then the update proceeds as if you were online. Plus, because the local media is an actual repo, you can also use the Add/Remove software tool as normal. Nothing is in git master yet, although I've got a local branch that I'll probably merge after 0.1.10 is released. Comments appreciated.