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Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

KDE: mouse sometimes freezes on audio playback

Just installed KDE, and I've noticed that the mouse will sometimes freeze briefly when ARTS starts up. I haven't had to exit X thus far, but the freezups are very vexxing. Has anyone else observed this?

Dusty

Schwag Merchant

From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada

Registered: 2004-01-18

Posts: 5,986

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Re: KDE: mouse sometimes freezes on audio playback

more details would be good.... for example, is your CPU usage going sky high over arts startup?

Dusty

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Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: KDE: mouse sometimes freezes on audio playback

I'll try to find out... gimme a sec, I'll restart KDE, open up the system monitor, and play an MP3.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: KDE: mouse sometimes freezes on audio playback

Nope, there's no huge spike in CPU load, surprisingly. Nor in any other sort of system load.:?

stasiek

Member

Registered: 2005-07-10

Posts: 16

Re: KDE: mouse sometimes freezes on audio playback

I had a similar problem with mouse freezes in KDE. In my case it happened not only with ARTS, but also every time I minimized/maximized a window. The solution was to upgrade nvidia-legacy drivers in my case, so maybe it has something to do with your video drivers?

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: KDE: mouse sometimes freezes on audio playback

Nope, this is only with ARTS, and I'm using the via driver. I had this problem with Noatun and Amarok in KDE 3.4; now, as of KDE 3.5, it seems a lot more pervasive, showing up with JuK, system notifications, anything that uses ARTS.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: KDE: mouse sometimes freezes on audio playback

Submitted a bug report on this and it got assigned a while ago, but nothing came of it... What's going on? Is there a known reason that this happens, and possibly a known workaround? Is this Arch-specific, or is it an upstream issue? I am without a clue... :x

Bralkein

Member

Registered: 2004-10-26

Posts: 354

Re: KDE: mouse sometimes freezes on audio playback

Yeah, what zen said.

The whole audio area is a bit dodgy in KDE... there is ARTS, but it is crap, the KDE devs will freely admit that, and it is currently unmaintained IIRC. I think there is also aKode, I think the notification and general DE sounds use that now, so maybe that is responsible for the change you are seeing in 3.5. To be honest, none of this affects me, because I have notification sounds turned off anyway, and I use amaroK with the Xine backend, which is pretty much the best Linux desktop music solution hands down as far as I am concerned.

I am looking forward to KDE 4 solving this problem with Phonon, a multimedia API for KDE that will be backend-independent. Until then, I guess we are stuck with the Status Quo, but zencoder's advice should sort out this specific problem you're having.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: KDE: mouse sometimes freezes on audio playback

It's also fixed in the Testing version of KDE.

Bralkein

Member

Registered: 2004-10-26

Posts: 354

Re: KDE: mouse sometimes freezes on audio playback

Do you mean that option was causing the problem and is now turned off by default in the KDE in testing, or was it some other problem?

jaboua

Member

Registered: 2005-11-05

Posts: 634

Re: KDE: mouse sometimes freezes on audio playback

...and I use amaroK with the Xine backend, which is pretty much the best Linux desktop music solution hands down as far as I am concerned.

w00t, I use xine too in amarok, codeine/kaffeine etc. I don't like arts either, haven't since fedora core 1.

It is possible to change in kde 3.5 too which multimedia system to use, Sound & Multimedia -> System Notifications -> Player settings (right above the "reset" button at the button) -> Use an external player

I've tried it with "play" (comes with "sox" I think), it worked fine.

Bralkein

Member

Registered: 2004-10-26

Posts: 354

Re: KDE: mouse sometimes freezes on audio playback

Ah, cool! I have it set to "No Audio Output" because I don't like bells and whistles interrupting music when I'm playing it (all the time)

Xine is a fantastic piece of software, in addition to the fact that in amaroK it has been tweaked to give the best spectrum analyser responsiveness and the fact that it plays anything you throw at it, it is also really quick to start up and really stable, unlike that piece of crap they call MPlayer, which explodes into pieces if you so much as look at it.

I am really looking forward to setting it to my multimedia backend in KDE4, so all things KDE will radiate its greatness when multimedia is on the cards. Death to ARTS!