This is the Debian GNU/Linux prepackaged version of gom, GOM is nOt
yet another Mixer (a generic audio mixer), put together by

Stephan Suerken <absurd@debian.org>

With 0.30.2-1, the package no longer ships hooks for modutils on
sound module load. Instead, you may add something like this

---
# This initializes sound mixers with gom anytime
# the "sound.o" module is loaded
post-install sound /etc/init.d/gom start >/dev/null 2>&1
post-install snd-mixer-oss /etc/init.d/gom start >/dev/null 2>&1
---

to /etc/modutils (2.4) or /etc/modprobe.d, id you really need that feature.

All notes below might be somewhat outdated ;):

Notes
-----

I. Updating from <=0.29.10

 There is no way to automatically upgrade configuration files from
gom-0.29.10 or less.

 Names and meaning of files in the gom configuration dir have changed
in 0.29.99; see the docs. In short it's:

config files are named <gomconfdir>/conf.[default_mixer|gom|initialize]; all optional
setting files are named <gomconfdir>/<mixer-device>.<name>

 There is no way to automatically convert the old conf files. I
recommend to reconfigure with 'gomconfig', to manually move your old
settings files from <name> to <mixer_this_file_is_used_with>.<name>
(e.g. 'mv cd mixer.cd'), and to manually remove remaining obsolete
files (especially "gomrc", "default").


II. Configuration

 There are possible per-system and/or per-user configurations of gom,
as described in the man page; both are not at all mandatory, and the
user configuration is naturally left to the user anyway.

 Both normal users and root (then changing system settings) can use
the script /usr/sbin/gomconfig to completely configure gom. It only
assumes that you have a correctly installed sound driver (or, at least,
this gives it a little more sense...).

 Please try this script; there is much more help available "online"
from there.


III. Initialization

 Gom tries to initialize the mixers via "/etc/init.d/gom start" on two
occasions: Firstly on system bootup (i.e., in runlevel S), and
secondly every time the "sound" module is loaded (see
"/etc/modutils/gom").
 The script will exit silently if "auto_init" is set to "no" in
/etc/default/gom. The script's (and new install's) default is _NOT_ to
try initialization.


IV. Miscellaneous

ALSA, and other sound drivers.

 Gom is currently a OSS only mixer, but it runs with ALSA with its oss mixer
emulation, and most likely with some other OSS-compatible non OSS drivers as
well.

 To use gom's auto initialization with such a driver you would have to
add it to the list of valid sound devices in /etc/default/gom. Please
refer to the comments in /etc/default/gom itself for details.

System Mixer Access.

 This package (of course?) does not handle the user permissions for
certain devices of the system; thus, users who want to use gom need to
have proper access to mixer devices they want to use. In Debian, audio
device files belong the group "audio", so adding the users in question
to this group seems to be a right way to accomplish this. This, too, can
be done with "gomconfig".

Binary naming scheme.

 Binaries of gom are called gom-{c|t|x}, with c,t,x meaning "binary has
build-in support for command line, terminal or X interface",
respectively. I decided to make a stand-alone package for the "full"
binary of gom including the X interface (as it depends not only on
xlib, but xview too). (The xview gomii is kind of "unnice" and a
little bit orphaned by the upstream author anyway.) So, the package
"gom" provides the binaries "gom-c", "gom-ct"; "gom-x" provides
"gom-ctx". The actual "gom" binary is selected via "alternatives"
(default is the "most complete" binary installed).

# Note 0.29.99: The upstream source is planning to skip the xview interactive
#       interface and with it, the compile-option to create different binary
#       flavors for gom -- but use one standard gom binary with the
#       mandatory command line interface and the ncurses interactive
#       interface. With 0.29.99, the default is to compile that standard
#       version; support for the xview interface is still there.
#       Conclusion: For now, I stay with the old naming convention and
#       alternatives, leaving out the (now unavailable) command line only
#       "gom-c" binary.

 -- Stephan Suerken <absurd@debian.org>, Sun, 11 May 2008 16:17:08 +0000