Re: No sound in games using sdl-mixer

[Alex Kost]

Ricardo Wurmus (2015-10-04 22:46 +0300) wrote:

> Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> FWIW I just tried ExtremeTuxRacer and it works out of the box for me (on
>> GuixSD).
>>
>> I do use PulseAudio though.  To allow ETR’s sound output to mix with
>> other things that may be playing sound already, I have this in my
>> ~/.asoundrc:
>>
>> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
>> pcm.!default {
>>     type pulse
>> }
>> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>>
>> Should we add it to the account skeletons?
>
> I don’t think that’s a good idea.  This means that the ALSA library will
> always try to output to the “pulse” backend, which may not exist.  For
> example, I do not use PulseAudio, so I do not have the “pulse” backend,
> so this ~/.asoundrc setting would not work in my case.  (I don’t know if
> it would do harm, to be fair.)

Oh, hey!  We both use dvorak and don't use PulseAudio! :-)

> Is there a better way to make sdl-mixer output to the ALSA backend by
> default?  I think outputing to ALSA is a safe default choice, as most
> applications do not directly output to PulseAudio but to ALSA.

So you also don't have a sound from sdl-mixer programs (games), right?

Perhaps we can just add “export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa” to /etc/profile,
but then it would probably not be a pleasant default for pulseaudio
people.

BTW I also have “export AUDIODRIVER=alsa” in my ~/.bash_profile.
Without it 'play' command (from 'sox' package) also tries to use
pulseaudio.

-- 
Alex