GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 664340
Changing the default alert sound breaks desktop sound theme
Last modified: 2012-10-04 12:26:34 UTC
Ubuntu 11.10 Steps to reproduce: 1) Open a terminal, dconf-editor, and the Sound Configuration window. 2) Navigate to org.gnome.desktop.sound in dconf-editor. The value for the key named "theme-name" should be "ubuntu" 3) In the terminal, run the command: /usr/bin/canberra-gtk-play --id="dialog-question" You will hear the expected "drum beat" question sound. 4) Click on "Bark" in the Sound Configuration window to change the alert sound. a) You will notice that the theme-name in dconf-editor has changed to "_custom" 5) In the terminal, run this command again: /usr/bin/canberra-gtk-play --id="dialog-question" You will hear no sound and see the message "Failed to play sound: File or data not found" 6) Change the alert sound back to "Default" in the Sound Configuration window. a) You will notice that the theme-name in dconf-editor has changed to "freedesktop" 7) In the terminal, run this command again: /usr/bin/canberra-gtk-play --id="dialog-question" You will hear no sound and see the message "Failed to play sound: File or data not found" In order to get Ubuntu's sound theme back, you have to manually change the value of theme-name in dconf to "ubuntu". Expected behavior: 1) When changing alert sound back to "Default," the value of "theme-name" in dconf should revert to "ubuntu", not "freedesktop". 2) When choosing an alert sound other than "Default", users will not reasonably expect that many of their other system sounds will disappear. Only the alert sound itself should change.
Bug report on Launchpad: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/883677
In gnome-control-center's sound panel: #define DEFAULT_THEME "freedesktop" You can either change the default here, or send a patch to get the default theme from GSettings.
I don't see why this is NEEDINFO (no question to reporter).
I was requesting a patch. As the patch isn't forthcoming and this only impacts distributions that change the default sound theme, I'll close this as won't fix. Reopen if you have a patch implementing the suggestion in comment 2. Thanks.