Ubuntu
gstreamer1.0 package

  1. Bug #1178272
  2. Comment #9

Comment 9 for bug 1178272

Revision history for this message
Rüdiger Kupper (ruediger.kupper) wrote : Re: Without pulseaudio, banshee and rhythmbox report "jack server is not running or cannot be started" and do not play

Hm, to my knowledge Lubuntu does not come with pulseaudio nor gstreamer. The standard install relies on audio applications that use plain ALSA. Try installing from a Lubuntu live CD.
It's certainly hard to choose which (meta-)package should pull in gstreamer1.0-alsa. But some package should include it, otherwise Lubuntu users will end up without it and have the problems described above. It's the link between ALSA and gstreamer, so it could come with one of the packages that deliver ALSA or gstreamer. There's probably no perfect answer here. It could just be included in the standard Lubuntu install, but the Lubuntu people opt for simplicity and use direct ALSA.

However, a typical scenario is as follows:
You install Lubuntu from a Live CD. You find a selection of slim audio software like audacious. However, you miss your rhythmbox/banshee/whatever. You install rhythmbox/banshee/whatever. It does not work, because there is no gstreamer. You google a bit and learn that the gstreamer plugins come with ubuntu-restricted-extras. You install it, but your rhythmbox/banshee/whatever still does not work, because there is no ALSA sink. You google a bit more but find no answer. You end up writing a bug report on launchpad ;-).

Anyway, it might even have helped if gstreamer printed a proper error message (like "no sink found") instead of trying to use the jack sink, which is probably the least likely to exist. I don't know where's the best place of doing it, but somehow it should be guaranteed that there is at least one sink present when gstreamer is installed.