DragonFlyBSD Decides To Drop PulseAudio

[septianix]

It's not really a big deal. Pulseaudio was designed to work around ALSA's limitations on Linux. Since BSD use an OSS compatible sound stack there's not really a need for Pulseaudio. There's only a handful of applications in ports that require this Linuxism. For most ports which have Pulseaudio as an option, it can safely be turned off, which is usually the default.

[Hibiki Kanzaki]

"Did PulseAudio ever stop being a pain in everybody's ass?

Not mine. I suspect PA, like systemd, works fine as long as the rest of the world is adapted to its way of doing things. I have multiple sound devices and use a dozen or so apps that work fine together with alsa, but stop working when PA is installed, so I uninstall it, and everything works fine. I don't doubt there's a way to make it work fine with PA, but I don't bother when it's easier to uninstall PA.

[starshipeleven]

"Running PulseAudio on DragonFlyBSD appears to cause problems for users, similar to PulseAudio in its early days on Linux"Wait early days? Did PulseAudio ever stop being a pain in everybody's ass?

Yes, like 3-4 years ago.
Now all audio problems I get on PCs I fix are because ALSA is crap (i.e. even if I delete Pulse the issue remains), and I must go kicking ALSA around to get sound working again.

I don't even understand, I cannot comprehend why anyone would use this filthy software.

Because it just works and can deal with bluetooth and more advanced things without requiring manual configuration. ALSA on the other hand...

[starshipeleven]

Let's do it! Why would you want an arm that itches and hurts if you have jackshit to replace it?

fixed.
ALSA lacks the functionality PA provides.
If you don't use it you lose functionality.

Sure most old-timers don't use new features, but are taken for granted by newer users.

[starshipeleven]

Not mine. I suspect PA, like systemd, works fine as long as the rest of the world is adapted to its way of doing things.

That's exactly how each ALSA driver works.

[microcode]

Even basic multi-client/mixing is missing from about half of audio chipsets (and thus not exposed through ALSA); so good luck hearing a system sound while your youtube video is playing.

Though I figure it wouldn't be a terrible idea to just add software mixing to ALSA, it might be the right place to have it for a variety of reasons.

[Guest]

I don't know why people hate Pulseaudio so much. It works perfectly fine for me. I am able to change, at any time, which output device plays back an
audio stream. I can have sound play out my headphones, laptop speakers and/or TV through HDMI. This is way better than what you can do in Windows.

[Awesomeness]

In related news:

The PA developers feel sorry that their user base shrank by 7 people.

[Chewi]

Years ago, when there was no PA, if I was watching a movie with 5.1 audio in my system, any system sound that tried to play, crashed the KDE system sound. Or any other program that tried to play a sound. The same thing with games. That's the problem that PA corrected for me. If your system did not have a 5.1 setup, you probably never missed PA. But for those of us with surround sound systems, it was a God send.

This. Not my experience exactly but surround under ALSA is a total ball ache.

[ypnos]

Though I figure it wouldn't be a terrible idea to just add software mixing to ALSA, it might be the right place to have it for a variety of reasons.

Alsa has software mixing since ages. But all the other fancy stuff it hasn't. Including equalizer sink, remembering different gains for different outputs (speaker vs line out) routing applications playing sound from one output to another (like, plugin-in our USB headset and continue listening on them, or continue watching your movie on your TV with sound via HDMI), or tuning the volume of each app separately (like, background music vs other stuff).

Basically any audio feature of this millenium is lacking from ALSA. And every other major OS has a sound server like Pulse. well, what you don't know, you don't miss.