On Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 11:24 AM Lukas Ruzicka <lruzicka@redhat.com> wrote:

On Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 10:04 AM Lukas Ruzicka <lruzicka@redhat.com> wrote:
Have you tested whether gnome-sound-recorder works well in KDE and optionally also other desktops? If not (or if it pulls too many dependencies), it would be good to suggest an alternative tool as well.

So, now I have found the KDE recording tool - KWave. I have tested it and works ok for the purposes of the test. I am updating the steps in the proposal to:

If you do not have any sound recording application installed, install Gnome Sound Recorder (the gnome-sound-recorder package) on GNOME or KWave (the kwave package) on KDE.


I believe we should move away from desktop tribalism, if possible. If one tool works well on all desktops, recommend that one, regardless of its name or library toolkit used. Of course ideally such a tool shouldn't pull half of some desktop with it as dependencies (as KWave does), and should have a reasonably newcomer friendly UI. It would also make the instructions sound better, currently it seems like we only care about GNOME and KDE.

After playing with this a bit (on my GNOME desktop and in a KDE VM), I'd say that gnome-sound-recorder is the best universal application to recommend, it has minimal dependencies and a very straightforward UI. An alternative could be Audacity, which has a bit more dependencies but still nothing too large, and while it's a professional editor, it's UI to start and playback a recording is still simpler than in KWave.

So, what about something like:
"Install any sound recording application you're familiar with. If you've never worked with any, the GNOME Sound Recorder (`gnome-sound-recorder` package) is small in size and simple to use. Alternatively, Audacity (`audacity` package) is a popular full-featured audio editor which can also easily capture sound from your microphone."

I didn't try too many available sound recording applications, perhaps there are even better tools, but the mentioned ones are OK.