[arch-general] [arch-dev-public] GNOME 2.28 - changes ahead

[Jeff Horelick]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Jan de Groot <jan at jgc.homeip.net> wrote:

> There's a release of GNOME 2.27.90 scheduled for this week, which means
> that GNOME will enter a code freeze. This is the point where I usually
> pick up packaging the next major version.
>
> For GNOME 2.27/28, some things will change in the distribution:
> - DeviceKit-Disks (new package)
> - PolicyKit 1.0 replacing 0.9
> - PulseAudio (new package)
> - Esound
>
> Then there's PulseAudio. Though I still don't feel the need for this one
> on the systems I own, a lot of users have requested this. PA has matured
> a lot in the meanwhile, and PA is more than just an ordinary ESD
> replacement.
>
> Another issue is ESD. This package is not really maintained upstream
> anymore, and I don't think it makes sense to have two sound servers as
> dependency for one desktop. Given the fact that Fedora disables esound
> support since 2.23.4, I think it won't be a problem to remove it from
> the dependency chain. Esound will stay in the repositories, but won't be
> used by GNOME as sound server anymore.
>
>
>
I'm personally unhappy that PulseAudio will be my only sound system choice
if i use GNOME. Yes, i realize that PulseAudio has improved massively in the
past year or so, but it still breaks quite a few apps and in my experience,
skips/stutters more than you want unless you're using a realtime kernel.

I really hope PulseAudio will be a optdepend or a actual part of the gnome
or gnome-extra groups so that if someone decides they don't want it, they
don't have to use it.