Pnmixer replaced by volumeicon

Pnmixer is not really a mixer, it is an alsa audio volume slider control for the systray. On my Lenovo PC, it has a "mute" checkbox that remains always ticked, even when audio is working. So, I have looked at alternatives...

As Easy 3.1.3+ is now using pulseaudo and pipewire, I thought that a systray volume control designed to work with pulseaudio, rather than just alsa, would be the way to go. I found a couple; however, settled on 'volumeicon', which is only an alsa volume control.

I didn't really see the need for the extra features of the pulseaudio-aware volume controls. The simple alsa-only volumeicon works fine. It has a "mixer" button which launches 'defaultaudiomixer', which is pavucontrol (the pulseaudio mixer app).

Here are my notes, with links to the volume sliders that I found:

http://nullwise.com/volumeicon.html

https://github.com/Maato/volumeicon

https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/volumeicon-alsa

needs pygtk:
https://github.com/gen2brain/volti

has a list of volume apps:
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/?O=0&K=volume+tray

needs gtkmm (2 or 3):
https://github.com/Vitozz/cppAlsaVolume/
...alsa, also has libpulse support.

gtk:
https://github.com/Junker/gvolwheel

gtk3, pulseaudio. written in vala and libgee:
https://github.com/Junker/MicTray
...requires libpulse, libnotify
...very nice, but only for the microphone

gtk2, alsa:
https://github.com/nicklan/pnmixer

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/tray_mixer_plus/

I used the volumeicon source from Debian, and configured it like this:

# ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --with-default-mixerapp=defaultaudiomixer --disable-notify --disable-oss

What's next? Bluetooth with pipewire, that's going to be interesting...   

Tags: easy