Raspberry Pi OS Switches To PulseAudio, Updated Chromium

[gukin]

I just got a pi 400 and built dhew3 (Doom 3) and have run it on my PI and have stumbled across some odd HDMI related sound issues. I guess I've been spoiled by the amazing performance and stability of x86_64. On one hand it's really cool to have a computer in the keyboard that draws five watts of power at full honk, costs less than $100 and runs rings around my Atom N270, but on the other hand getting it to run 20 year old software such as Unreal or Half-Life takes some serious doing. Doom3 is only possible because it can be compiled from source.

Still I would bet that my PI 400 compares well to the Athlon 2 II X4 630 which was my first quad core processor which didn't even have a Gallium Mesa GPU.

These are exciting times but in some ways I miss the weird, clunky keyboard of an original C-64.

[useless]

It runs at snail speeds.

GNOME Shell runs awful provide you open enough windows/apps. With 5-10 it already stutters a bit, which is annoying. Well, maybe I don't have a one year old computer but come on, KDE can handle it, Enlightenment can handle it. Hell, even the Plasma Wayland session has better responsiveness and animations don't lag (and the Wayland session isn't usable yet, for me at least). It doesn't matter if it's an Intel CPU/GPU or AMD CPU/GPU.

I regularly check the state of new GNOME versions as they come. It has improved, a lot (1-2 FPS animations are no more), but it isn't in a good shape yet. The Wayland GNOME session is even worse because the mouse cursor stops moving regularly in high CPU usage situations.

[aspen]

And we should consider you competent and trustworthy when it comes to judging Manjaro developers why exactly?

Because Manjaro's track record is public?

• 2015 - Manjaro lets their website's SSL cert expire, and asks users to set their system clock back
• 2016 - SSL cert expires AGAIN, albeit this time they don't recommend messing with the system clock
• 2017 - When they released their shitty AUR wrapper, pamac, they officially recommended doing a partial upgrade to install it.
• 2018 - Some of their shit literally deleted kernal modules. "Whoops", I guess?
• 2019 - Manjaro replaces LibreOffice with a less powerful, closed source alternative by default, and they only undo this after online backlash.
• 2020 - Manjaro's treasurer was removed for drumroll please... doing their job.

Hell, here's a member of the Arch Linux Security Team pointing out why Manjaro is bad

Also, it's just an installer with a shitty pacman wrapper and repos that are artificially delayed by a week or so.

[JS987]

I would be happier if they switched their desktop environment to KDE Plasma!

Bloatware like KDE+Chromium would need desktop quad core and 16 GB RAM

[GaryTheGravelGuy]

getting it to run 20 year old software such as Unreal or Half-Life takes some serious doing. Doom3 is only possible because it can be compiled from source.

Is Box86 too hard to use?

[JackLilhammers]

Bloatware like KDE+Chromium would need desktop quad core and 16 GB RAM

FYI Chromium is already the default browser and it runs pretty well.
Tearing issues aside, of course, but those depend on the gpu driver

[jaxa]

Bloatware like KDE+Chromium would need desktop quad core and 16 GB RAM

Supposedly, Chromium CPU and RAM usage is about to go down.

[duby229]

I haven't upgraded yet, but I just set HDMI and Analog to 100% ahead of the upgrade.

It depends on the audio chipset, some sound crackly or even distorted when their PCM volume is set to 100%. It kinda sounds the same as if you cranked a software pre-amp too high. You should actually play around with it and then set it to the highest volume that sounds right to your ears. I've had this problem on some realtek chipsets, but not on a cmedia chipset. I believe it's a hardware limitation.

[duby229]

Just a note that if your audio is really quiet after the upgrade, yet everything seems maxed out in the UI, speakers, etc, because alsa is still there in the background, its old volume setting is still applied, and then the new pulseaudio volume is applied on top of that.

Run alsamixer in terminal, select your audio output, and adjust the slider upwards, I did 80%, 100% is likely fine, maybe better thinking about it.

Actually, I think it depends on the audio chipset, some of them have sound distortions or crackling when their hardware volume is set to maximum. I've had this problem on some realtek chipsets, but not on a cmedia chipset. Best thing to try is listen to it, play some sounds, make a judgment call on the volume you set.

[danmcgrew]

It runs at snail speeds. Which tells a lot about Gnome in general. Multicore computers with Ghz clocks and GBs of RAM can not keep up with Gnome bloat.

I have had this thought for a while. A way for Linux to become vailable for mainstream would be to force all freedesktop developers work with a Raspberry computer while also ban any form of terminal so that they would have to think in terms of efficient and user friendly GUI workflows.

...working past whether you mean "viable", or "available", instead of "vailable" (it really doesn't matter)......

"Proposals" or "suggestions" (the adjective "...serious..." is inconsequential; you are serious) such as this surface from time to time, and provide an endless source of amusement and entertainment. They indicate a total lack of understanding as to precisely why Linux is not only stagnating, but continues on its decline--starting about four or five years ago--to more and more mediocrity, with every new "latest and greatest" distro rushed out every six months--because the overwhelming majority of "users" demand it--with more and more bugs (and bugs from the MANY previous versions still not fixed) and regressions, no Q-A and no validation testing, and lack of compatibility with past versions--too many times, sadly, incompatibility with even the previous version. How does the urge to upgrade, knowing that something is almost certain to break, make you feel? BUT...you have the latest, greatest, and biggest! And that is all that matters to most "users" of Linux, and the distro developers which have been forced into this mind-set.

One question only, and we ALL would like a definite, extremely well-thought-out answer--
precisely HOW do you propose forcing all developers to do ANYTHING?

As long as Linux remains a project, a hobby, rather than a product, it will never succeed. Make no mistake; for most people, Linux IS a hobby; for most, simply knowing that one is using the latest, greatest version which the distro developer has been forced to provide is proof enough that they are a highly, technically competent "Linux user". The reality is that most never learned how to really use, to its fullest, Linux, from the the very first distribution which was ever tried. The further reality is that the use of a Chromebook would make imminently more sense for most "Linux users".