On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 01:35:10PM +0200, Heiko Baums wrote:
How many times does it have to be said, that there are bug reports filed to upstream which have been ignored by upstream resp. which have been closed as fixed by first blaming ALSA for the PA problems, even if ALSA supports those cards perfectly out-of-the-box since years, then writing an obscure ALSA configuration which cripples those cards to simple stereo cards and now, after many discussions like this one, they suddenly say that PA is only meant for desktop purposes and not for professional purposes?
All correct, and we'd better be happy about that. The problem is *not* that PA doesn't support multichannel cards - it would still be completely useless for any serious audio work and we would still have to disable/bypass/remove it even if it would support PRO hardware. The problem is that it becomes more and more difficult to install a system without all sorts of (for me and others) useless components such as PA. The reason is lots of hard dependencies that should be optional extensions instead. When L.P. claims e.g. that Gnome wants 'usability' and 'accessibility', therefore it needs and audio stack and since the best one for desktop use is PA (no discussion) it pulls in PA, that does make sense. But when it becomes impossible (using binary packages) to install Gnome without PA (while accepting the consequences) that just amounts to *very bad design*. Because technically there is *no reason* why things should be that way. If Gnome doesn't find the PA components it needs for certain non-essential funcions, it should just go on without them. The same goes for consolekit, polkit and whatever other kids the family has grown meanwhile. They do not provide essential functionality, rather they interfere with the normal way to contoll access etc., so they must remain optional. Now udev has been merged with systemd, and one can wonder why. According to the authors, it is 'because they share some common code'. A rather weak argument, that would be true for almost any two subsystems you can imagine. Udev is perfectly usable and useful on its own, it should never be merged with something else that should remain optional. But maybe that's what behind it - in the long term systemd is supposed not be optional. So what will be merged in next ? The kits ? Dbus ? Filesystems ? Networking ? It will end up to be one giant 'system' blob, take it or leave it, as we know from other platforms, with no choice at all for the user. L.P.'s reply to concerns like this (if systematically interrupting a speaker during his presentation can be called 'replying') is 'what are you whining about, it's all free, it's all open, submit a patch'. As if something like systematic bad design and creation of dependencies could be mended with a patch. Ciao, -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)