[arch-general] PulseAudio in [testing]

[Yaro Kasear]

On Sat, 2010-11-27 at 11:55 +0000, Peter Lewis wrote:
> On Saturday 27 November 2010 06:30:36 Ng Oon-Ee wrote:
> > > >> Good to see the overwhelming positive lean; is pulse being considered
> > > >> for an eventual default by chance?
> > > > 
> > > > Almost nothing is default on Arch...
> >
> > So you should ask Gnome. And the answer is that yes, it will be default
> > on Gnome. If you do not use Gnome, then only if the apps you pull need
> > it.
> 
> Given that it's been said that if pulse is installed on your system and a 
> program calls its client lib, then this starts the pulse server, which in turn 
> takes over your whole sound system and forces everything else to use it (I'm 
> paraphrasing, but that's what I understood), I for one would not like pulse to 
> be a required dependency of anything. I'm not trying to troll, but that sounds 
> like malware to me.
> 
> Pete.

I second this one. Every time I've used Pulse on Ubuntu or Arch it's
been extremely unpleasant. Pulse has a nasty habit of breaking sound,
and its upstream developer also has an extremely nasty habit of blaming
these problems on ALSA or drivers or distributors or users or pretty
much anything but Pulse Audio.

I personally see no point in using Pulse Audio as ALSA works very well
without its help, and OSSv4 works the best as an ALSA replacement that
carries almost all the Pulse advantages Pulse grabs about (Except for
networked sound, to which I see absolutely no point in having.)

I would prefer not to see a package require PA to be installed. Failing
that, at least not requiring it to be configured or used at all. AFAIK
no actual software itself actually requires Pulse Audio to produce sound
yet, not even GNOME, though I hear that will change with GNOME 3. 

Pretty much anything that makes sound will use ALSA anyway, and has no
need for PA.

I stated it before, but I'll say it here, I don't think Pulse Audio is
right for [extra]. Compiz is a lot more stable and still manages to stay
in [community]. Pulse goes down a lot and takes sound with it and it's
getting put in [extra]? I'm not sure how this makes sense.

And I strongly oppose any "default" usage of Pulse Audio the way Ubuntu
or Fedora forces it on their users. It just doesn't work that well.
Also, forgive me if I am wrong, but isn't that against the Arch way of
doing things of just putting in a minimalist installation? I'd hate to
see Pulse Audio get installed by default for anything, but as a part of
the default Arch install I think is just an all around bad idea.