How to get xfce4-volumed to work in Lubuntu?

Question

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?

Solution

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.

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 :(

Comments

[Exeleration-G]

Thanks for answering my question again, fossfreedom :-). However, it doesn't seem to work here. This might have something to do with pulseaudio being installed and set as a startup application.

[Exeleration-G]

I looked somewhat further. It turned out that notification daemon was not checked in my startup programs. I've got it checked again right now, and everything works. Again, thanks for your help, fossfreedom.

[Exeleration-G]

For future readers: if you want to keep having the volume popups, see this question: askubuntu.com/questions/166194/…