Skip to Content
Running Linux, 5th Edition
book

Running Linux, 5th Edition

by Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, Matt Welsh
December 2005
Beginner
974 pages
31h 50m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Running Linux, 5th Edition

Desktop Environments

This section discusses multimedia support offered by two major desktop environments, KDE and GNOME, discussed in Chapter 3. Note that these desktops are not mutually exclusive — you can run GNOME applications under KDE and vice versa. There are of course other desktop environments and window managers that offer unique features, KDE and GNOME are just the largest and most commonly offered by the major Linux distributions.

KDE

KDE is the K Desktop Environment, covered in Chapter 3. In the area of multimedia , KDE offers the following:

  • A sound mixer (KMix )

  • A sound recorder (Krec )

  • Various media players supporting sound and video (Noatun, Juk, Kaboodle, Kaffeine, and others)

  • A CD player (KsCD )

  • A MIDI player (KMid )

  • An audio CD ripping and encoding utility (KAudioCreator )

  • A sound effects construction tool (artsbuilder )

Because the applications are all part of the same desktop environment, there is tight integration between applications. For example, the KDE web browser, Konqueror, can play audio and video files, and KDE applications can play sounds to notify the user of important events.

The multimedia support in KDE is based on aRts, the analog real-time synthesizer. Part of aRts is the sound server, artsd, which manages all sound output so that multiple applications can play sounds simultaneously. The sound server communicates with the underlying operating system's sound drivers, either OSS or ALSA on Linux.

There are also many KDE multimedia applications that are not ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Running Linux, Third Edition

Running Linux, Third Edition

Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, Lar Kaufman, Matt Welsh
Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition

Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition

Ellen Siever, Stephen Figgins, Robert Love, Arnold Robbins
Linux in Action

Linux in Action

David Clinton
Ubuntu for Non-Geeks, 4th Edition

Ubuntu for Non-Geeks, 4th Edition

Rickford Grant, Phil Bull

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596007604Errata Page