Hi,
[ This is in response to the thread in arch-devel here: http://www.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2009-January/009971.html ]
Regarding gstreamer support in phonon I'd like to add my 2 cents:
When you install KDE, you get the xine-phonon backend (and only the xine-phonon backend) by default. If someone wants to use gstreamer he must explicitly install it and then go to KDE control center and choose gstreamer. So it's not so much that you're dropping support for it (it is not supported by default anyway), it's rather the ability for anyone who wants to use it to be able to do it what you're removing. What's the advantage of that?
Some people like xine better, some don't. If you use a laptop and care about battery life you have to dislike xine for sure. In KDE3 I had to disable the sound system. In KDE4 I had to switch to gstreamer backend. At least in KDE 4.2 they have fixed this to certain extent (i.e., no more 100's of CPU wakeups per seconds on an idle desktop). However, I encourage you to simply open Dragon player and leave it there idle while looking at powertop (and compare the same while using gstreamer backend). You can also play an mp3 in a phonon-based player and see the difference between xine and gstreamer.
By the end of the day, discussing the strengths of each backend is not so interesting. Xine is the default and that's good. But why remove the freedom to change it to gstreamer for those who want it? As far as I know, allowing to use gstreamer doesn't affect in any way to those using xine, does it?
Gstreamer has its problems, but it's used by all the gnome people (most Ubuntu/Fedora users and more) so it's can't be that bad. Not as to not allow users to use it if they want to.
Thanks, Alberto.
On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 9:22 AM, Alberto Gonzalez info@gnebu.es wrote:
Gstreamer has its problems, but it's used by all the gnome people (most Ubuntu/Fedora users and more) so it's can't be that bad. Not as to not allow users to use it if they want to.
I'm fairly certain Pierre is not saying "screw choice!" here. It looks to me like he's saying "oh god, this is WAY too buggy and I don't want our users using something this broken". That said, i'm sure the PKGBUILD will still be around somewhere, so anyone who wants to can still build the package themselves
On Friday 23 January 2009, Aaron Griffin wrote:
On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 9:22 AM, Alberto Gonzalez info@gnebu.es wrote:
Gstreamer has its problems, but it's used by all the gnome people (most Ubuntu/Fedora users and more) so it's can't be that bad. Not as to not allow users to use it if they want to.
I'm fairly certain Pierre is not saying "screw choice!" here. It looks to me like he's saying "oh god, this is WAY too buggy and I don't want our users using something this broken". That said, i'm sure the PKGBUILD will still be around somewhere, so anyone who wants to can still build the package themselves
"I don't want our users using something this broken" is not a good idea, IMHO. No one is going to use it unless they want to. They have to actually install it and configure KDE to use it. Why remove this _option_? I'm sorry that Gstreamer doesn't work for Pierre, but for many others it does (while xine doesn't, for other reasons I already mentioned).
So what I say is: If the phonon developers allow to use different backends, let's just don't limit them for no good reason (a good reason would be more like: "compiling support for Gstreamer breaks Xine", not "I don't like Gstreamer, it doesn't work for me". As I said, it's not like Gstreamer is an obscure or experimental multimedia framework, it's probably the most used one in the Unix world, so it can't be that bad for everyone).
Hi,
On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 1:22 PM, Alberto Gonzalez info@gnebu.es wrote:
Gstreamer has its problems, but it's used by all the gnome people (most Ubuntu/Fedora users and more) so it's can't be that bad. Not as to not allow users to use it if they want to.
The last time I checked, sound didn't work with the Xine backend when using OSS - http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/OSS#KDE_Phonon
Later I will check if this problem still persists and see if there is a solution for making it to work with the Xine backend.
Does someone already has a solution or knows if it is working now?
Best regards,
Paulo Matias
On Friday 23 January 2009, Paulo Matias wrote:
The last time I checked, sound didn't work with the Xine backend when using OSS - http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/OSS#KDE_Phonon
Later I will check if this problem still persists and see if there is a solution for making it to work with the Xine backend.
Does someone already has a solution or knows if it is working now?
I cannot confirm this bug still exists, since I don't use OSS, but I still fail to see the advantage of building phonon with the option:
-DWITH_GStreamer=OFF
Does it help anyone? Because if it creates problems for some users and doesn't solve any problem for anyone, it looks to me like a net loss (and not that I'm asking to change an upstream default, rather just to respect it).
Regards, Alberto.
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