Re: the State of Linux Audio
Nicolas George <george@nsup.org> writes:
> Le septidi 27 messidor, an CCXXIII, Martin G. McCormick a écrit :
>> The only reason I put pulseaudio on here was way back
>> when I was running lenny and had no /dev/dsp. Someone suggested
>> installing pulseaudio. I did. /dev/dsp came back and life
>> marched on.
>
> This was a bad suggestion.
>
> /dev/dsp is obsolete on Linux, has been for years. Not having is perfectly
> normal, having it back is possibly a sign that you are on the path of
> breaking things.
>
> In my opinion, PulseAudio is only good for messing things up. The features
> it brings are of doubtful usefulness for most users
As you said, that's your opinion. I like being able to easily switch my
sound from speakers to a USB or Bluetooth device, for example.
> and the brittleness
I haven't seen Pulse-only issues in two years or so. Really, most of the
problems have been worked out. Only if you have a corner case (like a
rare device with a badly-maintained ALSA driver) will you have problems.
Then again, using a badly maintained driver is a recipe for disaster
anyway, that's not Pulse-specific.
> and complexity it introduces are very real.
Use cases have gotten more complex. For the simplest-most use case (one
user, static I/O config), Pulse is indeed overkill, and can be
removed. I'd argue that the complexity it brings when installed is not
*unneeded* complexity though.
--
"We will need a longer wall when the revolution comes."
--- AJS, quoting an uncertain source.
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