Comments on: Handling misbehaving libraries in binary products

By: Nath

Nath — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:30:02 +0000

The only thing about Pulse that I don’t like is that it doesn’t work well with Emu10k-based cards. Even though the developers claim that it is Creatives fault, those cards worked very well before Pulse.

By: Harald Nikolisin

Harald Nikolisin — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 23:42:21 +0000

Thanks for the interesting link which provides some new information for me.

However, it seems that things will be more complicated with the new pulseaudio system which is totally new for me as an openSUSE user.

The chance that all software components are bug-free is 0 – either some of them will dropped or we will never see good sound support on Linux.

By: sakuramboo

sakuramboo — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 06:10:58 +0000

TL;DR version – OSS is the best, ALSA should share everything with OSS and Pulseaudio blows.

By: Wyatt

Wyatt — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:19:43 +0000

This has been covered in so many places and so many ways it’s not funny, but know that the linked image is very misleading. Read this:
http://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2009/06/state-of-sound-in-linux-not-so-sorry.html

By: sakuramboo

sakuramboo — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:27:32 +0000

The ubuntu-desktop package and pulseaudio are dependencies of each other. Remove one, the other goes with it. When Ubuntu first released pulseaudio, it was a stand along package and could be removed. Now, it is tied to the system and can’t be removed without removing the desktop. I’m sure you can probably uninstall everything and install it all back piece by piece, but why should I?

Pulseaudio is easier to work with? Ever since it came out, I have been having problems that took weeks to fix. Granted, now it works, but I’m still seeing artifacts of the system hiccuping from time to time (that one, I don’t know if it was pulseaudio that did it or something else), once in a while, I will loose sound (to “fix” I have to wait around for a bit of time).

But, the biggest reason I hate it, it is an added layer that is not needed in music production. Why must I now have to deal with the added system lag of having yet another audio sub system? Something where system latency means everything, by forcing another audio layer, this just makes things worse. I was forced reconfigure jackd for days, trying to find the right settings, all because Ubuntu wanted to force me to use pulseaudio.

By: Harald Nikolisin

Harald Nikolisin — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:53:32 +0000

Audio on Linux is really a mess – look at that:

http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/linuxaudio.png

And stories from (my) real-life:
1. Install openSUSE 11 – ok
2. plugged in a second audio interface (USB) – ok
3. change the order of the audio interface on my desktop (KDE4)
3a) no effect on LGP games
3b) no effect on skype
3c) no effect on RealPlayer
4) the correct effect on Amarok – YES – but no mp3 sound (d’ooh)
5) an very old game (bridge builder) has not sound at all (broken openAL)
6) sometimes the external interface crashes the whole system..

YES – there are different reasons and probably many solutions for each problem, but who has the time to elaborate all the stuff?

Above all Linux is a very good OS and many things on the desktop improved in the last time, but there is still “no light at the end of the sound tunnel”.

By: Michael Simms (CEO and head of Development)

Michael Simms (CEO and head of Development) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:22:26 +0000

Well, I’ll be going into more detail soon in itsown article, but we were really happy with things pre-pulse. Sound just worked.
Things are actually getting better, our general target is ALSA, but OSS does seem to be coming back from the dead.

By: GBGames

GBGames — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:55:51 +0000

Thanks for posting this article! For a long time I held off on upgrading my Ubuntu system, but when I did, I found that the upgrade caused all manner of problems. Maybe a fresh install would work better, but the main issue is that every so often audio just completely dies. I have to restart because I don’t know what exactly has gone wrong.

Another issue related to audio involves Flash or Java programs stealing control of audio, so if I try to run a game while Firefox is still running, I’ll find that my games or music players are silent and unstable.

I’m told that all of these issues might be related to PulseAudio or at least Ubuntu’s implementation of it, so I can’t wait to hear more about LGP’s struggles with it.

By: Jury

Jury — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:21:31 +0000

What you say is a nonsense. You can’t “lose a desktop”. ubuntu-desktop is a meta-package. Think of is as a list of default packages for desktop system. You can safely remove it.

As for the pulseaudio, what do you have against it? It’s much easier to work with and much more reliable for desktop system.

By: Hannes

Hannes — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:57:16 +0000

For you as an developer, what sound system is most nice to code for? Of course you are using OpenAL/SDL but I guess you still have an insight into the code. If you fear a flame war or feel uneasy, just ignore this question. :)

I myself love OSS (v4 of course) because “it just works” for me.