PulseAudio 6.0 Is Coming & Other Linux Audio Plans For The Future

[phoronix]

Phoronix: PulseAudio 6.0 Is Coming & Other Linux Audio Plans For The Future

Last month during the Linux Foundation events in D?sseldorf, Germany was also a PulseAudio Mini Summit where the developers behind the once controversial Linux sound system had plotted some of their plans for the future...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTgzNjU

[bulletxt]

What's controversial about pulseaudio?

[drspinderwalf]

What's controversial about pulseaudio?

It unified the Linux audio stack and made it more robust. However, this added another layer of system components that some people find 'bloaty'.

Also, Ubuntu 8.04 really really screwed up their first deployment of Pulseaudio. Given the enormous user base that were upgrading to that LTS release, it was a disaster and nearly every user had broken audio. This was, of course, Ubuntu's fault and not Pulseaudio - they had recommendations for a better experience and Ubuntu kinda went stupid and ignored it all.

In short, you might think of it as a 'mini-systemd'. Not near the level of controversy but it was still controversial. Plus, it was worked on by Poettering, too.

I think nowadays it's more or less accepted by everyone, excluding those that prefer just plain ALSA/OSS.

[Daktyl198]

What's controversial about pulseaudio?

To Michael, "A portion of my readers don't like it for various reasons" == "controversial". Also there's the whole "created by the same guy that created systemd" thing, but he's not really THAT involved in PA anymore, is he?

[drspinderwalf]

To Michael, "A portion of my readers don't like it for various reasons" == "controversial". Also there's the whole "created by the same guy that created systemd" thing, but he's not really THAT involved in PA anymore, is he?

Well, I seem to recall an awful lot of hate with Pulseaudio. It became an expectation to start reading angry comments on forums/irc channels in the 2008-ish-era.

All I can say is that I think it's really amazing software. In the unlikely chance that a PA dev reads these comments, a heartfelt thank you is in order.

[phdemartin]

Now PulseAudio is mandatory if you want to use Skype for your comunication, in my case, a Swiss guy living in Chile, I need it.
I prefere strait Alsa and Jack for my Ardour Mixing, but no choise here

[Rallos Zek]

What's controversial about pulseaudio?

Its a broken piece of shit that turns your audio quality to crap, causes problems with app and games, and breaks tons of multimedia creation software requiring you to remove all the pulseaudio shit out of you system to get work done.

Its made the same person that birthed systemd so you know the people who defend pulseaudio are just as crazy and brainwashed.

[interested]

What's controversial about pulseaudio?

PulseAudio is a system wide sound daemon. That means if there is a bug in either the sound chip driver, the ALSA layer, or the way the user space program is made, PA gets the blame :-)

Sound on Linux was effectively in a very sorry state before PA with almost no developers working on it. All other attempts on making a sound daemon for Linux had failed, or extremely faulty and not even system wide, but limited to DE's like either Gnome and KDE. The problem of making a system wide Linux sound daemon was insanely hard, because it as middleware exposes problems all through the developer stack, from kernel driver to user space.

That meant that PA broke sound on a lot of systems in the beginning. As a Fedora user I had to use a SB16 clone card instead of the rather exotic on-board sound chip on my MB for quite a time until all the kernel driver bugs was fixed. But PA have been working fine for years on Fedora now, and sound is longer a sore point on Linux, thanks to PA, Alsa and kernel developers that have been working together to squash bugs.

Even today there is apparently some of the small distros where PA still can have problems, because the distros are too small to have developers working on sound, so they ship with strange Alsa configs that causes PA problems.
So such users still claim that "PA" is broken.

The modern thing today is, that instead of making a bug report, some people prefer to whine on-line about bugs, as if that is ever going to solve any bugs in the Open Source world. A good bug report may take some time to make, but can be worth gold for developers. On-line rants helps no-one and doesn't get bugs fixed.

[drspinderwalf]

PulseAudio is a system wide sound daemon. That means if there is a bug in either the sound chip driver, the ALSA layer, or the way the user space program is made, PA gets the blame :-)

Sound on Linux was effectively in a very sorry state before PA with almost no developers working on it. All other attempts on making a sound daemon for Linux had failed, or extremely faulty and not even system wide, but limited to DE's like either Gnome and KDE. The problem of making a system wide Linux sound daemon was insanely hard, because it as middleware exposes problems all through the developer stack, from kernel driver to user space.

That meant that PA broke sound on a lot of systems in the beginning. As a Fedora user I had to use a SB16 clone card instead of the rather exotic on-board sound chip on my MB for quite a time until all the kernel driver bugs was fixed. But PA have been working fine for years on Fedora now, and sound is longer a sore point on Linux, thanks to PA, Alsa and kernel developers that have been working together to squash bugs.

Even today there is apparently some of the small distros where PA still can have problems, because the distros are too small to have developers working on sound, so they ship with strange Alsa configs that causes PA problems.
So such users still claim that "PA" is broken.

The modern thing today is, that instead of making a bug report, some people prefer to whine on-line about bugs, as if that is ever going to solve any bugs in the Open Source world. A good bug report may take some time to make, but can be worth gold for developers. On-line rants helps no-one and doesn't get bugs fixed.

Masterfully said, and a good jab at those that don't help to fix the problem.

[cockroach]

It unified the Linux audio stack and made it more robust

LOL @ "more robust" - for years (if not decades) PulseAudio has been the root cause for every single audio issue on Linux systems that I have witnessed...