Ubuntu – How to get xfce4-volumed to work in Lubuntu

lubuntulxdenotificationvolume-controlxfce

I want to use xfce4-volumed in Lubuntu, because I like the volume notification popup that it gives when changing the volume in Xubuntu. Lubuntu still lacks this feature.

Simply installing xfce4-volumed in Synaptic Package Manager doesn't seem to work: running xfce4-volumed in a terminal won't show me the expected popup when changing the volume. The terminal doesn't look like it's actually running anything: it immediately gives me a new prompt (yourname@ubuntu:~$) instead of showing some sort of debug log.

I've tried to install xfce4-mixer as well. This program does run, but it still won't give me the xfce4-volumed-popup when changing the volume, even in combination with xfce4-volumed.

How can I get xfce4-volumed to work?

Best Answer

You'll need some prerequisite packages:

sudo apt-get install xfce4-volumed gstreamer0.10-alsa

xfce4-volumed is a daemon that requires the gstreamer-alsa plugin to work. Normally you would have this run on startup.

However, for testing I just ran xfce4-volumed from a lxterminal.

If you then use the standard volume control you'll see the popups - you'll also need to clear the notification envelope in the system tray to see further popups.

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In testing though - I found that xfce4-volumed was quite temperamental - sometimes it stopped working and the only way to get it to start again was to logout and login :(

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