Making Skype work with PulseAudio in Ubuntu Intrepid and Jaunty

Following my sound issues with Skype on Ubuntu, I did a bit more research and eventually found an excellent how-to article on PulseAudio in the Ubuntu forums. Appendix C explains how to get Skype to work properly and indeed it is a doodle and means there is no need to kill PulseAudio when using Skype! I've tested it in Intrepid and Jaunty and it works a treat. To quote the article, here's how to do it:

Open Skype's Options, then go to Sound Devices. You need to set "Sound Out" and "Ringing" to the "pulse" device, and set "Sound In" to the hardware definition of your microphone. For example, my laptop's microphone is defined as "plughw:I82801DBICH4,0".

You will have to experiment with the different options for "Sound In" until you find the correct one: choose an option, click on "Make a test call" until you find the option that works. On my machine, here's what the option window looks like:

Skype Options, Sound Devices Tab

Skype Sound Issues

Skype is not available in the Ubuntu repositories but you can get hold of it (and a few other things) through medibuntu. However, it looks like that version of Skype has a problem with sound on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, as detailed in this bug report. The workaround suggested in the discussion that consists in killing pulseaudio before launching Skype works for me so that's good news. Even better news, it looks like the problem is fully sorted in Ubuntu 9.04, which is currently in beta. So, until then, I will use the workaround.

One lesson to learn from this though, is that if you ever have a problem with a piece of software on Linux, a good practice is to start that software from the command line: the output in the terminal window is invaluable for developers and maintainers to understand the problem and is a good place to start in order to find a solution to it. Quite often, just putting the error message in Google will return a number of articles and bug reports on that exact problem.

Wandering Ibex

After 6 weeks with Ubuntu 8.10, aka Intrepid Ibex, the change that has most affected the way I use my laptop is the new network manager. Connecting to a wireless network is easy and just works. It is generally fast to connect, definitely faster than with 8.04 aka Hardy Heron. It will immediately recognise networks it knows about and connect automatically. In particular, it is much better than Windows at connecting to a Wi-Fi network that does not advertise its SSID and recognising it later as a known network.

But the biggest benefit is the support for 3G modems out of the box, in particular the Huawei models available in the UK. When I plugged in my 3 USB modem for the first time, it recognised the device, asked me what country and what operator I was on and that was all the configuration I had to go through: no software to install, instantly on. It also integrates seamlessly into the network manager so there's no flaky third party software to use every time I want to connect. I just have to plug the modem in, select it in the network manager drop down and hey presto, in a few seconds I am online, whether in a pub, on the train or anywhere I've got network coverage from 3 (which is sometimes a bit patchy, I have to admit). OK, there's one thing it doesn't do, which the Windows version does: it doesn't tell me how much of my monthly quota I've consumed. However, I very rarely download large files via the modem so I've never reached the limit: large files is what the (fast) home broadband is for. It would be more important for someone who does use a 3G modem more heavily than I do. Maybe that's a feature to ask for in the next version?

Intrepid Upgrade

Canonical released Ubuntu 8.10, code named Intrepid Ibex today. So obviously, I felt like I had to upgrade my Hardy Heron (8.04) T42 tonight, especially considering that Canonical have advertised this release as focused on the desktop and mobile computing so should be ideal for a laptop. As usual with recent Ubuntu releases, once the 1466 files my upgrade needed were downloaded, the rest of the process was a breeze and I am now writing this on a newly upgraded machine. Well done to Canonical for making it easy and idiot proof. So here are my first impressions, in no particular order:

• The Gnome theme is slightly more streamlined and looks good.
• I was expecting OpenOffice.org to be updated to v3.0 but that wasn't the case and Intrepid keeps v2.4. Hopefully, an upgrade to 3.0 will be available later.
• There is a new Create a USB startup disk option in the System, Administration menu. I'll have to try that out!
• There's a Recent Documents sub-menu in the Places menu. This will definitely come in useful.
• The Shutdown button that used to open a dialog box box has been replaced with a drop down menu that includes a Guest session option: makes it easy to lend your machine for a few hours to a friend without being worried about your files or having to set up a special account.

Everything else looks like Hardy but I'm sure I'll discover new changes as I use the machine more.