Pulseaudio (to be fair)

[oldcpu]

Originally Posted by Jonathan_R

I can't stand pulse. I wish it was not included by default. It's ALSA or OSS for me.

A point of clarification here. And Jonathan_R I know that you know what I'm about to pass on, but other's who don't may misread your post. Hence while to say its "ALSA or OSS" is perfectly correct, for those who do not know, the choice is not "ALSA or OSS or PULSE", because PULSE does not provide drivers, while ALSA and OSS do (provide drivers for sound).

Alsa provides a driver (via kernel modules) and also an API for programs to play/record sound.

Pulse is a layer above alsa driver. It does not replace the alsa driver. Hence when one has pulse installed, one also MUST have alsa. Now if one selects to use pulse, one then does not use the alsa API but one still uses the alsa driver/kernel module.

Here is a link to some basic openSUSE sound concepts: Sound-concepts - openSUSE

[growbag]

Originally Posted by Chrysantine

To compact his 'opinions'; "It's not our fault, it's someone elses broken software"

A bit sad really because the bloke must have put a lot of his own time and effort into something which just isn't quite there yet, even though the theory behind it is quite good and well intentioned.

Maybe it would be more appropriate to be pointing the finger at the distro "bosses" instead though, they are the ones who decide what is included in a release are they not? If they listened a bit more to their end-user's complaints, things like this could easily be avoided.

This is a very common attitude these days, especially among young people, so it's not really surprising.

Everything is somebody else's fault, very few people are man enough to stand up and be counted!

We see the same attitude in other areas of Linux these days too, for example the great KDE4 debacle. In that case it was "uneducated end users", not the designer's fault, and "it was the Nvidia driver's fault", not the KDE designer's.

Thankfully it all turned out good in the end, the young people, well, that's another story .

[Chrysantine]

Originally Posted by growbag

A bit sad really because the bloke must have put a lot of his own time and effort into something which just isn't quite there yet, even though the theory behind it is quite good and well intentioned.

The biggest problem with PulseAudio is that I consider it "yet another layer on top of glue", with the foundations being as bad as they are currently (The whole Linux audio system being a mess that is) it does little but add one more layer that breaks like a house of cards.

If anything the functionality should've been bundled as part of ALSA itself as part of the tools package but my guess is "they didn't want to work together" which seems to be a prevalent problem with the FOSS 'community' as a whole - everyone wants to do their own thing and the end result is one big mess that barely works together.

[Jonathan_R]

Originally Posted by Chrysantine

The biggest problem with PulseAudio is that I consider it "yet another layer on top of glue", with the foundations being as bad as they are currently (The whole Linux audio system being a mess that is) it does little but add one more layer that breaks like a house of cards.

If anything the functionality should've been bundled as part of ALSA itself as part of the tools package but my guess is "they didn't want to work together" which seems to be a prevalent problem with the FOSS 'community' as a whole - everyone wants to do their own thing and the end result is one big mess that barely works together.

I don't think that's quite accurate. Barely works together? Come on! It's not that bad. While it seems the projects do their own thing, they do work together.

[Cloddy]

oldcpu wrote:

>
> Cloddy;2053248 Wrote:
>> Jonathan R wrote:
>> > I can't stand pulse. I wish it was not included by default. It's ALSA
>> or OSS for me.
>>
>> I don't think it is included in 11.2. After a recent install of RC1 I
>> thought, "oh, must delete pulseaudio", only to find it wasn't installed.
>>
> This is definitely worth looking into to find the exact state.
>
> On my sandbox PC which is running a 32-bit 11.2 RC1 I noted sound "just
> worked" but I did not run any diagnostic scripts to see the exact
> configuration. I do vaguely recall noting that pulse was disabled, and I
> have a suspicion that pulse may be installed by default in
> openSUSE-11.2, but may also be disabled by default on openSUSE-11.2 for
> some ( all ? ) hardware.
>

Seems more complicated - if that's possible - as I made two 11.2 RC1
installations on the same machine today and I noted during the installation
that the one with Gnome desktop had pulseaudio enabled but on the KDE
installation it was disabled.

Could be a random feature of the installation process. It's happened many
times that I've repeated an identical installation on a machine and found a
different route was travelled through the installation. It behaves like a
program that has a number of uninitialised variables.


--
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy
"I wear the cheese. It does not wear me."

[consused]

That fits with the current ability (11.1) to disable pulseaudio on KDE but not easily on the hacked Gnome (see earlier KJ44 post). They've probably done no more than change the KDE default.

[robopensuse]

For those who want to know about this, and state of affairs when Pulse got included in 11.1 try LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess [LWN.net]

If you object to changes to Audio layers breaking applications, then how can Linux develop features, like individual volume controls for applications and network transparency for sound, which are present in "other" OSes?

Do you really want to impose the OSS abstraction of a mid 90's sound card, developed for Dos/Win, on applications?

As for Chrysantine's suggestion, ALSA is an underlying driver implementation, providing a hardware abstraction, for application and infrastructure software. ALSA and Pulse do not compete!

[consused]

Originally Posted by robopensuse

If you object to changes to Audio layers breaking applications, then how can Linux develop features, like individual volume controls for applications and network transparency for sound, which are present in "other" OSes?

Let me guess. The other OSes kept it in development until it worked, by thoroughly testing it, before releasing to GA. What was the "must have it" need that pushed it out in 11.1? Do tell, but I probably can guess at that one that too.

[Chrysantine]

Originally Posted by robopensuse

If you object to changes to Audio layers breaking applications, then how can Linux develop features, like individual volume controls for applications and network transparency for sound, which are present in "other" OSes?

Because of the retarded bias;

- If Windows does something similar, it sux0rz, they're n00bz, buggy **** and evil capitalist pigz that enforce their broken software on you and forums like this will fill with "OMG MICROSOFT SUX LOL LINUX RULEZ".
- If Linux does this, it's only excellent development and should be embraced because it will be the shining beacon of freedom and light in the **** stained swampland of evil.

At least they TESTED that most of the functionality worked without you know, skipping sound and other completely useless waste of time that takes away from getting the work done.

[growbag]

As much as I would rather wear a ginger toupe', pink trousers, and watch an episode of "Big Brother" than agree with Chrysantine, she has a point!