Re: Really, ...
Andrej N. Gritsenko wrote:
> John Paul Adrian Glaubitz has written on Friday, 30 November, at 1:04:
> >Absolutely true. And this is actually why I don't understand so many
> >people get so emotional when it comes to software like systemd or
> >Pulse-Audio.
>
> Well, without any emotions. In last 2 years I've installed Ubuntu and
> Debian systems 7 times. 3 times sound just haven't worked. 2 times sound
> worked unstable from beginning. 1 time sound worked but I've got complain
> after a month that it sometimes ceases to work so they had to reboot the
> system. All those systems were fixed by deinstalling Pulse-Audio. Only on
> one laptop Pulse-Audio worked (unfortunately it has been stolen shortly
> so I cannot tell now if it worked stable). What I suppose to think about
> Pulse-Audio? You can tell me million times I am dumb and Pulse-Audio is
> the best, I will never trust you, I'm sorry but experience tells me just
> otherwise.
I've looked at PulseAudio myself recently due to issues users reported
with it. My view is that it's quite buggy, but there isn't much reason
to blame Lennart for that, while creating the project does show sound
technical judgment.
On a general level, a "high-level" sound system like PulseAudio is
necessary for general desktop use. I mostly use "raw" ALSA for my own
playback, but that doesn't mean it would be fine as the default
solution. From what I've seen of the PulseAudio code, it seems OK on a
general level (I haven't looked at that much of it, but enough to debug
a few different issues). Such a daemon was/is required, the general
design looks OK, and nobody else has done better. So I think overall it
should be taken to show that Lennart does know what he's doing. (The
design is not perfect though - especially I think the client-side API
could be easier to use without hurting functionality.) The people who
claim just not using PulseAudio would be a fine alternative overall (on
distribution level, rather than as a alternative working for certain
users) don't know what they're talking about.
However, current PulseAudio is still quite buggy. But I wouldn't place
too much of the blame for that on Lennart (other than him not dedicating
more of his time to polishing it). AFAIK he hasn't been involved much in
its development for the last couple of years. And his past involvement
is unlikely to be the explanation for not having better development
later; other similar audio work doesn't seem to attract that many
developers either - in fact some of the issues affecting PulseAudio
users are due to problems at lower levels of the audio stack.
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