[arch-general] Opinions on pulseaudio

[Allan McRae]

Just to clarify a few things...

1) If you only install libpulse, you are not not using pulseaudio.  It 
is just another "useless" library on your system.  You already probably 
have plenty of libraries installed on your system that you do not use.
If you really do not want it installed, rebuild the relevant package 
using ABS.  But given that with its dependencies it takes up a total of 
1.17MB on my system it seems an utter waste of time...  If you want your 
system that clean of unused libraries, look at Gentoo and USE flags.

2) You are not being forced to use pulseaudio.  The next GNOME release 
will be using pulseaudio by default.  That is a decision from the GNOME 
developers which we have held off implementing for a couple of releases, 
but Arch follows the upstream developers decisions.   If you do not want 
pulseaudio, pick a better desktop such as XFCE!  You are not being 
forced to use GNOME or pulseaudio.

3) Any package that does force you to use pulseaudio (beyond installing 
libpulse) is probably a bug.  All packages so far have been built with 
optional pulseaudio support.   File bug reports.

4) If you _choose_ to use pulseaudio and run into issues, file a bug 
report.  We have a fairly vanilla setup, so you can go directly upstream 
with your issue or go via our bug tracker if you think the issue may be 
Arch specific.   Non-specific complaints about bugs get everyone 
nowhere.   Bug reports FTW.

Regarding #3 and #4,  I see maybe one bug report in our tracker about 
breakages in pulse and the packages built against it in our tracker.  So 
I guess congratulations to the developers dealing with this upgrade for 
what appears a relatively seemless transition because no-one is having 
actual issues...   Which leads me to (rhetorically) query why this 
thread is so long and filled with "facts" about pulse being broken?

Allan