PulseAudio Lands Much Better Support For FreeBSD - Audio Now Plays Correctly

[kpedersen]

On FreeBSD, PulseAudio is useful mostly for making easier the porting to FreeBSD of Linux programs that use PulseAudio.

Yeah, the general consensus is that we don't really want pulse audio. If a port drags that cruft in, it is seen as a bad thing.
We basically only use it as a compatibility layer to run Linux software. Interestingly so much Linux software uses it rather than ALSA means we never needed a compat layer for ALSA.

Presumably its main use-case is remote audio (remote desktop is of great interest to me, including audio!) however I have yet to see this working once since PulseAudio has existed so I am beginning to suspect it is defective. For my own user-cases I just wrote my own bespoke system. Not pretty but it actually did something.

[AdrianBc]

Audio support under FreeBSD works quite well. One thing that might not occur to folks with Linux background is that the primary purpose of PulseAudio is to work around bugs and problems that are Linux-specific; on FreeBSD, desktop use of audio works just fine without it.

Yes, that also matches my experience with FreeBSD.

On FreeBSD, PulseAudio is useful mostly for making easier the porting to FreeBSD of Linux programs that use PulseAudio.

[AdrianBc]

FreeBSD (and all of the BSDs, actually) are just so far behind in application and driver support that they can hardly be considered for any half-serious desktop computing use.

The only Unix system that actually shines as a desktop and laptop OS is macOS.

Whether an operating system shines or not as a desktop and laptop OS depends mostly on personal experience and personal preferences, not on intrinsic qualities of that OS.

I have used macOS during many years on my Apple laptop.

There were a few features that I liked, e.g. some nice typefaces were provided with macOS and Xcode was quite convenient for developing GUI applications.

Other things could be used, but they were annoying, e.g. the way that mouse buttons were used (still strictly one-button at that time), which was extremely awkward compared to using 3 buttons together with mouse gestures, like I was accustomed to do in professional graphics applications.

However, I have mostly hated macOS, for being exceedingly dumb. I am not an average user, but a professional designer of hardware and software, so I use my computers for much more varied things than Internet browsing, document reading or movie watching.

Far too often I was blocked because the so-called user-friendly graphic interface of macOS offered absolutely no way to to whatever I wanted to do, even if the hardware would not have had any problems in doing that.

What was even more annoying is that in many such cases I eventually discovered that there were actually ways to do what I wanted in macOS, but they were not exposed in the graphic menus where I searched them, but they could be done only with the command-line utilities inherited by macOS from FreeBSD, but extended with additional command-line options that were either undocumented or documented in obscure, hard-to-find, places.

The macOS version that I hated was old and more versatile than those of today, which are even more restricted, so after seeing the later evolution of Apple software, I have completely abandoned macOS.

While with macOS I was frequently frustrated by not being able to do what I wanted, after switching to Linux on all my desktops and laptops I have never encountered anything that I could not do.

It is true that sometimes doing something new on Linux required wasting some time with experimenting with various programs to find one that was suitable or even having to modify the source code of some program, but there never was a problem without solution.


On the other hand, both on macOS and on all Windows versions that I have used, since Windows 3.0 until Windows 10 Enterprise, I have frequently encountered cases where no workaround was possible, because the makers of those operating systems assume that their users are too dumb to be allowed unrestricted access to their own computers.


So, if you like macOS, that is fine, it is probably the right OS for whatever you do with computers.

However, that does not mean that it is also the best for all the other serious desktop users.

[trasz]

Audio support under FreeBSD works quite well. One thing that might not occur to folks with Linux background is that the primary purpose of PulseAudio is to work around bugs and problems that are Linux-specific; on FreeBSD, desktop use of audio works just fine without it.

[Lance]

FreeBSD (and all of the BSDs, actually) are just so far behind in application and driver support that they can hardly be considered for any half-serious desktop computing use.

I have different experience. I used FreeBSD (GhostBSD) for Audio recordings and had far better Audio Quality than in Windows and Linux. That is just one example! FreeBSD supports more hardware than you think and when it does, it runs great and has far better quality than most linux distress. But it is no OS for absolute noobs.

[nist]

No problems in my FreeBSD 12.2 installation.

[Paradigm Shifter]

While it's nice to see more stuff working on *BSD, I can't say I've ever used a *BSD device (other than a PS3) where I've cared if audio works or not. Macs are so locked down and restricted that while they might be based on BSD, it's not really the same thing.

edit:

Yet in Ubuntu, my sound is fully corrupted when I try use my USB headset. 🤷

Not got a USB headset, but audio does behave oddly for me with a Bluetooth headset on Ubuntu. Most frustrating. Could equally be a Bluetooth thing, though, rather than just audio.

[waitman]

I've used FreeBSD as a primary work computer for years. I believe the people who complain don't actually use FreeBSD, and maybe even faux Linux users who really run MS Windows yet preach about FOSS. Anyhow, I have only noticed issues with pulseaudio if I want to switch audio devices, however it's simple enough to sync up with -k command line switch. It's great there is an update, i'll check it out.

[Turbine]

Yet in Ubuntu, my sound is fully corrupted when I try use my USB headset. 🤷

[tildearrow]

FreeBSD (and all of the BSDs, actually) are just so far behind in application and driver support that they can hardly be considered for any half-serious desktop computing use.

The only Unix system that actually shines as a desktop and laptop OS is macOS.

Shines, but sadly is a locked-in pig.