Re: Intel alsa sound request for Laptops

[Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>]

On Tue, 31 Jan 2017 11:37:22 +0100,
Lars-Peter Clausen wrote:
> 
> On 01/31/2017 10:13 AM, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> [...]
> >>>> $ alsamixer
> >>>> cannot open mixer: No such file or directory
> [...]
> >> However, if the default sound device has been disabled by not loading i915, then alsa should be smart enough to use the next available sound device without the need to resort to obscure commands (snd_hda_intel.index=1,0) or additional software (pulseaudio).
> > 
> > Sorry, ALSA layer isn't designed to be smart.  It's rather dumb, gives
> > simply what the kernel provides.  You can implement many things on top
> > of it in a form of plugins, but the basic policy is not to modify the
> > given stuff, and pass it as is.
> 
> Given that alsamixer is capable of handling multiple cards and able to
> switch between them at runtime we should still look into this. The
> application should not refuse to launch if the default card is not available.

Well, currently the "default" just points to the default card, that is
card#0.  It's the current definition.

We may change it, but it means the inconsistent behavior against the
older version, thus we must do it VERY carefully.  (e.g. an
application opening the device twice may get a different result
depending on the status when it's applied to a hotplug device.)


Takashi