So, recently I got so fed up with Vista that I decided to put Ubuntu 9.04 (the latest release as of now) on my laptop as a second OS with the idea to move to it and abandon Windows altogether.
Installation went great - it took me about 15 minutes to configure and install it. Everything seemed awesome - I installed 64 bit OS version and was ready to use it. Well, it took me a minute to see that there are few pieces of software that don’t come with the OS by default - Skype was one of them. Quick search on the net revealed a link that allowed me to get 64bit version of Skype fo Linux and I managed to install it right away. Then came audio issues. I quickly managed to get Skype working, but then I noticed that if Skype was running then any other software that does audio output wouldn’t produce sound. I tried everything I could have thought of with no luck, but then I run into few posts and forums that helped me out.
- To set up Skype to work (audio in, out and Skype system sounds):
Skype Sound Settings
This sets PulseAudio library as the main audio processor here. Once you do this, Skype should work just fine, but you may experience issues with simultanious audio from few pieces of software.
- If you have issues with audio output from simaltaniously running programs, you may need to do more set ups. In my case, Skype wouldn’t work if I was listening to music or watching videos. So, I found this page, which helped me with refreshing installation of PulseAudio. For Ubuntu 9.04 just follow “Part A” appendix there as suggested by the author. The only thing I had to do diffrently - reboot my computer before step 5 in that appendix.
- Finally, to make VLC use PulseAudio you need to execute the following command from Terminal:
sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-pulse
This will download and install plugin that enables VLC to use audio library.
Well, this is it. Pretty simple once you know what you’re doing.
