Re: what's with pulseaudio
On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 06:32, Steve Kleene <skdeb@syrano.acb.uc.edu> wrote:
> Sometime in the last month or two a regular upgrade of my Wheezy systems
> caused them to start running /usr/bin/pulseaudio. Related directories popped
> up, including:
>
> /.pulse
> ~/.pulse
> /tmp/pulse-tHdn2FVycDvX (e.g.)
>
> as well as these files:
>
> /etc/rc3.d/S02pulseaudio
> /.pulse-cookie
> ~/.pulse-cookie
>
> Did pulseaudio replace some other audio system?
It replaced esd a long time ago. In Debian it is generally
pretty easy to avoid PA if you want to, but some package
probably started recommending it. In general, more and
more apps are optionally using it or even starting to require
it.
You should check the reverse depends on PA to see what
installed it.
>If I shut it down will I have no sound? (I'll try this if no one
>happens to know the answer.)
Sound should continue to work. If some app actually depends
on it, removing PA would result in that app being removed.
>And what's in these .pulse-cookie files? I'm leery of anything
>with "cookie" in its name.
Uh, that is odd, but ok. Do you also worry about the X11 cookie?
It is just an auth token, not sure of the details, but for sure it
gets used if you use PA's network transparency.
Linux sound is moving gradually, but probably inevitably,
to the [GST]/PA/ALSA stack, at least as the expected
config. It will probably always be possible to have some
other setup, but it will be nonstandard.
A lot of people here seem to hate PA, but it has worked
very well for me for many years now, and it has seen
improvements in that time. I wonder how many anti-PA
people are going off of old experiences vs recent, especially
since development really picked back up and brought us
PA 0.9.23 - 1.1
Cheers,
Kelly Clowers
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