Esound versus Alsa versus GStreamer versus GNOME versus 2.6 versus ...
Hi,
How the hell is sound going to work in Etch under GNOME?
1/ Current status
At the lowest level:
-------------------
Sarge was bound to supporting OSS officially (in its kernels), and had
optional ALSA packages for 2.4 or optional 2.6 kernels with ALSA
support. ALSA will be the standard in Etch.
In GNOME:
--------
Right now, esound is pulled in by gnome-desktop-environment, but isn't
started by default. esound is known to be buggy, and I'm happy with
the conservative choice of not enabling it as it permits applications
using OSS or ALSA to just work.
Some GNOME apps rely on GStreamer (Totem, Rhythmbox, Sound-Juicer)
audio-output, others on esound, some even have ALSA and/or OSS plugins.
In GStreamer:
------------
GStreamer ships schema files which have the default audiosink set to
OSS, new users will have their audiosink set to this.
GStreamer applications outputting sound use a "gstreamer0.8-osssink |
gstreamer0.8-audiosink" dependency.
Future GStreamer releases might offer an autoaudiosink using whatever
seems appropriate at run time (no configuration needed): esound if
available, artsd if available, etc.
2/ Proposed plan
OSS should be supported, but the default is ALSA in the lower layers,
and that should be reflected in the upper layers, that means that I
propose:
- shipping GStreamer with default audiosink alsasink, a NEWS.Debian
inviting to change the current audiosink of existing users to
alsasink if possible (this can be done via gconf-tool or via GNOME
preferences)
- requesting all GStreamer apps outputting sound to depend on
"gstreamer0.8-alsasink | gstreamer0.8-audiosink" (Rhythmbox, Amarok,
Totem, Sound-Juicer, ...) eventually with a NEWS.Debian suggesting
the installation of gstreamer0.8-alsa
- (the current configuration where esound is not started is fine)
What do *you* think?
I'd like some input from people using non-OSS/ALSA/esound audiosinks,
eventually from people not using GNOME, so I might post this as a more
general question. In particular, I'm interested in knowing if any
particular configuration changes are needed, and what packages need to
be changed.
Right now, this seems feasible in the GNOME + GStreamer world
separately from the rest of the distribution, if you see any reason why
the transition should happen all at once, I'm interested in bringing
this up to debian-devel.
Bye,
--
Loïc Minier <lool@dooz.org>
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