I'm using Pd as part of the engine for an interactive art project. The setup is an old PII laptop running xubuntu Dapper. I'm stuck on a few things:

  1. It's a long story but the bottom line is that it appears that I have to use this crappy computer as well as its less-than-steller internal sound card, and that the internal sound card or driver has some sort of bug which requires me to switch to ALSA *after* starting Pd. Everything else produces no sound. And OSS is completely inoperative. So is there a way I can do this in a patch? (The sound card is a Yamaha OPL3-SA23 BTW.)
  2. I'd like Pd to be able to send commands to the OS such as shutdown -h "now" when the gallery closes each evening. Is there a way to send such commands from a patch? The only thing I could think to do is send a message to a Python script using sockets....seems rather clumsy.
Thanks,

-John
-- 
John Harrison
Associate Professor of Violin
Director: CRATEL
  (Center for Research in Arts, Technology, Education and Learning)
Wichita State University
Wichita, KS 67260-0053
USA

http://JohnHarrisonViolin.com
http://www.wichita.edu/CRATEL

tel: (316) 978-6572
fax: (316) 978-3625