23Oct/0610
acroread, your new multimedia application
I had this problem lately, that sometimes sound just stopped working. This is not related to the previous incident - I checked that first... but I was to find another surprise this time..
Turns out Acrobat Reader was to blame for this one:
# lsof /dev/snd/pcm* COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME firefox-b 17368 tigert mem CHR 116,11 8338 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p acroread 21635 tigert 147u CHR 116,11 8338 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
What the Fsck?? Last I checked, "Acroread" was a tool to view PDF files. Why does it block the audio device when nothing is even being played..?
(for an added shock, if you are an interaction designer or involved in usability, check out the acroread preferences, if you haven't for a while.. they have 21 pages of settings.. but that's another story..)
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October 23rd, 2006 - 01:51
> they have 21 pages of settings
Konqueror still wins
October 23rd, 2006 - 04:07
Acrobat 7 Standard/Professional (not Reader) on Mac OS X fires up a copy of MySQL when you start it. If that’s not bad enough, it sometimes doesn’t kill it when you quit Acrobat. Grrrrrr.
October 23rd, 2006 - 05:45
Compare it to evince which has zero preferences tabs.
God I love GNOME so much.
October 23rd, 2006 - 05:53
I hope they upgrade to using gstreamer soon.
October 23rd, 2006 - 08:43
WOW. Are people even using acroread? I wondered what the hell it was doing in the ubuntu-repos, when the default installed pdf-reader words fine.
At least I now have an explanation why it launches so slowly on Windows. I used to think they were just delaying the boot time to impress the end-user wonder what a marvelous and complicated piece of technology it must require to view a PDF file.
October 23rd, 2006 - 09:47
Adobe Acrobat Reader has a `Read Out Loud’ feature. Maybe that was blocking the audio device?
Either way evince beats Adobe Reader hand down in most cases.
October 23rd, 2006 - 09:58
I don’t see what’s exactly wrong about the 21 pages of settings.. they seem fairly well laid out and it’s more or less clear what they do. IMO, it’s better than having few options accessible to the user, with the rest hidden away in a config file or gconf, or even only accessible via command line options…
October 23rd, 2006 - 14:58
unfortunately, acrobat reader is the only application on linux that can display complex pages decently without jagged edges or part of the text gone…
October 26th, 2006 - 15:51
Heh, I just had the same thing with file-roller in Ubuntu Edgy of all applications (remembered this post and went back to it to see what that lsof command was). Really weird, why would an archive-opening application block sound…?
November 2nd, 2006 - 15:51
“unfortunately, acrobat reader is the only application on linux that can display complex pages decently without jagged edges or part of the text gone…” it is absolutly true , ‘cos i have the same problem under Linux redhat