So, why no sound, exactly?

I'm just curious as to the technical reason why sound hasn't yet been implemented in the Linux client.

Doesn't SL use .ogg for in-game sounds? Ogg is an open source format; there shouldn't be any issues at all with supporting it under Linux.

Also doesn't SL use fmod as its sound library? I believe that's cross platform across Windows, MacOS X and Linux, so that shouldn't be much of a stumbling block either.

What's the hold-up? I know video streaming uses Quicktime, but what about regular audio streaming and in-game sound effects?

The Linux client looks pretty good so far, but sound is a pretty big part of the SL experience, so lacking it gets annoying.

-Zorin

As far as I know SL doesnt support .ogg (at least not when I tried the last time)
But MP3 isnt that hard under Linux (and I'm a n00b )

I agree. no sound isn't any fun... no environmental sounds, no sounds when you recieve a message, no sound when someone is typing... I can live with no streaming audio, because half the time I'm playing my own music. But no sound at all is so erm... quiet!


shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Once you get into sound, you have tons of people complaining that Sound Server X is not supported.
Personaly, since I only started playing SL after the alpha came out, I don't have any sounds to miss.

Gstreamer as mentioned in http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/faq/html/chapter-using.html supports all sorts of different audio servers. Though it is a shame that on linux nobody was able to agree on one server.

I personally think that sl is already rather quiet and cause the sound effects are missing as well, I am missing something with the linux client.

Regards,
Leff.

But Gstreamer adds another dependency or library. In the long term, it would be good to use an outside sound-piping program, but I have no clue what Linden's strategy is on this point.

Do you have to be able to play MP3's under Linux? If you cant play mp3's under Windows, do you still have sound in SL?
Isn't it enough to have the proper sound drivers (ALSA, whatever) installed?
I dont really care about streaming music in SL, but I do miss the environmental sounds (typing, wind and stuff). Isn't that done in the SL client?

SL on Windows uses the FMOD library for all sound. FMOD has been available for Linux for a long time.

I've not seen a single reason ever advanced for not supporting sound on Linux and I see no practical limitation except there seems to be one coder handling the linux port and he's busy, I guess...

Well, I know it's still an alpha client, and I only recently started, but if there isn't any progress ill switch back to Windows. I dont mind bugs or crashes, but if the Linux client makes me enjoy SL less then then Windows client I wont stick around too long.

If the Windows version uses the FMOD library, and this is a library that Linux has had for a long time (which is true), then there's no technical reason why the Linux client couldn't be made to support sound.

Personally, I don't like going to parties or chilling with my friends and watch them all dance to music I can't hear.

I think most of the features missing from the Linux client are all quite minor fixes - its just no one at LL is able to work on them.

Stuff like file upload, thats probably missing because there is no standard set of dialogues in Linux to present to a user so they can browse for a file. Uploading works fine (you can upload snapshots).

Snapshot to disk - same, no file dialog. The actual saving of snapshots works fine, file a bug report - you get a snapshot.

Sound requires a slighty dfifferent interface, Copy and Paste is the same.

Basically, all the Linux/X/alsa specific code is simply missing.

The problem as far as I can tell is that Linden Lab subcontracted the port to Icculus, who is a very busy man. He apparently got the viewer running but that's about it, and then stopped to work on other things. Meanwhile, nobody at LL appears capable/willing to finish it off themselves.

I don't see why they are subcontracting this when they do the Mac port themselves. Finding Linux developers just isn't that hard these days.

For now you can always use Wine instead of going back to Windows.

I surmise that the reason that LL doesn't have upload dialogues is because they don't want to be locked into a toolkit, since QT and GTK provide almost all standard dialogues.
Now a seperate, toolkit based upload client would be nice.

From the state of the port, I dont think they got as far as picking toolkits. Icculus was tasked with porting an existing code base to Linux and thats exactly what he did - to the letter.

Foir now I see only one problem with implementing sound in the Linux client: the FMOD licence requires the company to purchase a licence per product (SL viever) and per platform (Linux). LL probably has bought a Product Licence (includes one platform, Windows) for US$6000 and one extra platform (MacOS) for US$3000. For Linux, another platform licence would be needed, meaning to spend another US$3000. It might be possible that LL just didn't buy the Linux licence yet, because they just wanted to check if the Linux runs client at all and will be accepted widely enough to justify the extra cost.

All this of course is speculation, but maybe this can serve to shed some light on the overall situation with FMOD and Linux. So what we have to do is continue our support for SL under Linux, so LL can see it's worth it to spend some bucks on us

334 ppl voted for their linux client. So my guess there are more ppl using linux. That's less then $10 per user at this moment.
Somewhere else I read that LL recieved $11,000,000
Well, maybe they could do almost the same with 10,997,000 and buy an extra license

I know that I'll buy a years worth of Second Life and land if they do get sound working...probably others are waiting for the same.

There isn't any progress. Alpha's been out for 2-3 months now, and just about NO progress has been made. Just empty promises (as usual).

I switched back to the Windows version, too, without sound, fullscreen and some other things, SL is just not enjoyable

88 ppl have voted in the
How much do you pay for SL monthly (Linux) thread.

88 ppl add up to about 2500 USD/month, which is, not too much
Since many more might not have answered/are not in the forums, it might be maybe 2-4x this amount (see the 334 votes for the linux client).

That's about 5000-10000 USD. It's still not much, if you deduct the server, infrastructure and company costs, but MAYBE it could justify paying one (part-time) Linux capable developer.

But many of these ppl can and do dual-boot, so even if the Linux client is not perfect, it's not lost money - currently. Of course, there's another market: the people who only use Linux, and can't use too much MMO games, because most don't run on Linux (and some only with WINE). If SL Linux version was good, maybe those ppl would be 'sucked up' here, and thus make Linden Labs richer.

Yup, that's what's needed. No one wants to develop anything really good for linux. Would be great if LL set an example. I won't go back to windows anymore. LL really should take the lead before someone else does.

You know what? Lindens, I have a proposal. Give me $10k, CVS/Subversion access to the code base, and 2 months. Sign me on as a temporary contractor. I'll even sign non-disclosures on the code if you want, I don't care.

The Linux client will work.

Hehe I'd do the same, and I think quite a number of the other Linux users here would, too. I bet some of us would do it for even less, or no money, in their spare time. Essentially it's all about promoting Linux, and we're going a long way to achieve this

I for one have upgraded my account a couple of times since then and am about to move up another tier.

actually SL does use OGG. every sound is uploaded to SL as an ogg file. the reason why it seems like it only uses mp3 is because alot of people only stream with mp3 streams. streaming in ogg to SL provides much better sound at the same bitrate as mp3.

Darkside, Zi, and others ....

It seems that there's no lack of competent people to bring the Linux client into the 3rd millennium within the user community. All that's lacking is people within LL to do it.

Which of course immediately leads to the solution, which is to open-source the Linux client. Hell, they could even add a clause "This shall not be ported to Windows" if they wished to preserve control over that area for some reason. The OSI wouldn't approve, but it would be totally within LL's rights as copyright holders.

Sadly this won't happen, because the anti-FOSS brigade currently hold sway in LL. All we get is lip service. They happily use BSD/ZLIB/MIT/LGPL-licensed code, but have no apparent interest in opening up any of their own or returning anything useful to the FOSS community. Nor do they realize that the client is just a millstone around their necks, and would be far better off thrown out to the community to support.

I continually get the impression that Philip *wants* to do so, but gets no support from Cory or other developers for it. I guess it's just my wishful thinking though. For some reason, Philip is very high up on my esteem list, despite lack of tangible reasons for it. I hope the position gets justified some day.

As for the Linux client getting attention, forget it. It was released because Philip was beginning to look silly continually giving dates for its release and none ever being kept. They've done that now, so all we'll get are version number updates so that it's still permitted to connect to the grid.

There are some very very good reasons for not throwing the code to the community at this time, it will be released when both the code and LL are good and ready.

This has been discussed to death several times on these forums, please, lets not loose another thread to pointless arguments.