Wish: Quiet installation option

[dotancohen]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

I often test new systems (alphas, betas, mockups) when the house is asleep. Therefore, it is essential to me that the system not beep or be otherwise noisy. I propose an option in the Advanced dialog (at the end of the installation wizard) for disabling the PC Speaker and desktop (Gnome/KDE) sound theme. The advanced dialog contains only two options at the moment, so clutter is not a worry.

[Evan (ev)]

The installer does not use pcspkr, nor does any sound play during the installation, so I am bit confused as to the nature of the request. Do you mean post-installation? Couldn't you just turn your speakers off?

[dotancohen (dotancohen)]

Yes, I do meant that the system should be quiet for the post-installation boot. And on a laptop computer one cannot disable the speakers or adjust the volume until the desktop already appears.

[to be removed (liw)]

I'd like to have this, too. In fact, I think the installed system should, by default, be silent. Computers should be quiet unless told to make noise.

There are all sorts of situations in which it is a real bother that Ubuntu systems make noises by default. And other computers, too. I've been woken up several times on long flights by the Windows login sound, for example, when other people decide to do some work when they can't sleep.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I don't see how this is really a bug in the installer. This is a matter of sane defaults in the installed system. In general we should not implement installer questions of the following form:

  Would you like your system to be buggy?

    (*) Yes
    ( ) No

Furthermore the installer should not be responsible for turning off sound; the relevant package should install with the correct defaults instead.

I don't know where to reassign this, though.

[to be removed (liw)]

I agree it's not an installer bug. In Debian I'd reassign it to "general", push through a policy change to mandate silence by default, and do a mass bug filing against all relevant packages.

The login and other desktop sounds should probably be assigned to the gnome-desktop-environment package, yes?

There's a beeping sound at shutdown, at least in some circumstances, which is either
GNOME or kernel related.

[dotancohen (dotancohen)]

In my opinion there should be an installer option, under "advanced" (which already exists and is mostly empty) for blacklisting pcspkr.

[Evan (ev)]

Moving this to pulseaudio and marking the installer task as invalid. I'm not 100% certain that pulseaudio is the correct place for it, but at least it will get some attention from the audio bug triagers there.

[dotancohen (dotancohen)]

> I don't see how this is really a bug in the installer.

This is not a bug, it is a feature request.

> The login and other desktop sounds should probably be assigned to
> the gnome-desktop-environment package, yes?

I specifically use Kubuntu, and as Kubuntu and Ubuntu share this same bug tracking tool, please do not make this desktop-dependant (as the gnome-desktop-environment package reference suggests).

> Moving this to pulseaudio and marking the installer task as invalid.

The feature request is to have pcspkr optionally blacklisted during install.As this would be an install-time option, presented to the user by the installer, why isn't this an installer task?

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

I'm unsure how pulse is supposed to know the user's intent unless given something from a mixer (or installer or ...)

[dotancohen (dotancohen)]

Why is this invalid? If it is invalid for pulseaudio, then assign it elsewhere.

> I'm unsure how pulse is supposed to know the user's intent unless given
> something from a mixer (or installer or ...)

Exactly, the installer would set the proper config option if Quiet was selected at install, as described in the OP and again in comment #6.

Please reopen under the appropriate package. Thanks.

[dotancohen (dotancohen)]

To be very clear: This bug is a feature request. The feature requested is for the Ubiquity installer to provide an option for a Quiet System. This option would reside under the Advanced dialogue, which is found on the last screen of the installer.

If the Quiet System option is checked, then the installer would make these changes to the new system
1) The pcspkr would be blacklisted
2) The Gnome/KDE sound theme would have all sounds (such as the login sound) disabled.

> The installer does not use pcspkr, nor does any sound play during the installation, so
> I am bit confused as to the nature of the request. Do you mean post-installation?

Yes, the changes affected would be post-installation.

> Couldn't you just turn your speakers off

No, laptop speakers cannot be disabled.

> I don't see how this is really a bug in the installer

It is not a bug in the installer. It is a feature request for the installer.

> Furthermore the installer should not be responsible for turning off sound; the
> relevant package should install with the correct defaults instead.

Apparently people have differing opinions concerning what those defaults should be. Enough people like the startup sound that is currently exists as the default. However, enough people would prefer it to not be there so this bug report (feature request) exists.

[Simon Quigley (tsimonq2)]

I believe that Ubiquity is now quiet, and really doesn't emit any noise.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for ubiquity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]