[arch-general] problem with pulseaudio when resuming from pm-suspend

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sat, 2012-03-10 at 10:35 +0200, Thanasis Georgiou wrote:
> On Mar 10, 2012 2:34 AM, "Ralf Mardorf" <ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net> wrote:
> > Some people, not only deaf people, don't need audio with or without PA,
> > it's abstruse making it a dependency.
> No it's not. The developers decided they want it a part of their desktop
> environment and now it's a dependency. You obviously have problems with PA,
> I saw your other thread, but this doesn't mean it's useless. Have you tried
> reporting your problems to PA and providing data about your cards so
> someone can fix them? Maybe contact Gnome/KDE and purpose to make
> pulseaudio optional or at least, easy to disable?
> 
> That said, I really like pulseaudio. It fixed every single problem I had
> with flash playing audio without killing everything else and the
> application-specific control is nice.

At the beginning I only wanted to help, I didn't start that discussion
about PA for this thread, other people did start it.

---

It's correct that most Linux users are comfortable with PA, but a wide
range of computer users don't use Linux, because of audio and video
issues.
Since I use Xfce I don't know if GNOME3 does feature a button to disable
and enable PA.

Pro-audio users aren't a minority of computer users, they are just a
minority on Linux.
Professional sound cards, are cheaper than a consumer stereo, so IMO
such cards are also interesting for consumers.

You can get semi-professional Envy24 based cards for around 30,-€ at
Ebay. It's not wise to assume that PA has a good design. The pro-audio
designs for the cards mixers are made to be used easy as anything. You
don't need to be an audio engineer to use such a mixer. The "desktop
sound" concept is a bad idea.
It's a misconception to assume, because PA already isn't easy to
understand, that professional stuff must be more complicated. It's the
other way around.
Professional audio concepts are older than computers are and were
designed to keep the usage easy.

If PA would work that good as you claim, than I wonder why people all
the times have got issues or think that they've got issues regarding to
PA.

If I recommend to get rid of PA, if somebody shouldn't need it, it seems
to be a crime. If it's recommended to get rid of pcspkr, if somebody
doesn't need it, it's ok. (I know that PA isn't the cause regarding to
this thread.)
Anyway, it's the same kind of thing. PA is a Holy Grail, other stuff,
e.g. pcspkr isn't.

We would have more Linux users = more hardware vendors that would care
about Linux, if some developers and maintainers wouldn't ignore the fact
that people are interested in multimedia PCs. Since PA is a
show-stopper, another e.g. is dropping the nv driver (not done by Arch
Linux :), people stay at Apple and Microsoft.

The argument of the PA fans is, that it's working for them and for the
minority of Linux computer users, but they ignore the signs of the
times. The computer is able to replace your stereo, your television
etc., if you can use it with good multimedia hardware. Another argument
is, that PA should make things easier, but it doesn't, it's design
limits functionality and make everything more complicated.

Btw. I DON'T HAVE ANY PA ISSUE FOR MY ARCH! I don't use PA and FWIW I
use pcspkr without any trouble.

---

At the beginning I only wanted to help, I didn't start that discussion
about PA for this thread, other people did start it.

I hope we can stop it, thanx,
Ralf