Comments on: Sound on Linux Anti-FUD: Calm, Certainty and Confidence

By: Colin

Colin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:21:38 +0000

In an ideal world we’d all just sit down in a big room with all the hardware manufacturers in the world and then develop our replacement sound stack and not release until it worked with every bit of hardware in the room. In the real world this doesn’t happen!

I’m sorry you’re having problems at the moment but without people reporting the problems and seeing that they are fixed, we cannot expect to move forward. Complaining that “it worked with X, Y years ago” doesn’t really help. We’re aware that regressions are introduced by driving the sound hardware in a very different way to before. This is inevitable with such a change. People should be keen to say “OK, so things no longer work so well for me, what can I do to help fix it again?” rather than just saying “It’s broken, it worked via a different way a year ago, this is shit, I’m going to complain”. It’s all about the attitude really and while I don’t mean to pick on you personally (as your message was very polite and well mannered etc.) people who are part of the FOSS “movement” should appreciate that things are not deliberately broken, nor are things changed without due cause. Sure, it would be nice if we had the resources to QA everything fully on every hardware in existence before releases etc. but that simply isn’t possible. We need user feedback and quality bug reports to get things working. It’s how things work.

I strongly encourage you to help report bugs and get the problems fixed for yourself and for the benefit of others with similar hardware.

If you cannot do that just now, just use the interface your distro should provide you to disable PulseAudio and try again with a new round of updates to see if other people have managed to report and have fixed the bug or bugs you were experiencing before.

For reference, Skype with PA works exactly how I want it to now! My Bluetooth headset works great with it and the ability to move streams from built in sound card to the headset is perfect. It does it automatically without me having to do anything. Accept call, open headset, streams move across. Perfect!

By: Juan Carlos Perez

Juan Carlos Perez — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:26:56 +0000

This is an interesting article, but I should not be reading it. The microphone of the computer should “Just work” and I should not have to read lots of things in internet install programs which result in forced reboots, to no avail. I have been using Ubuntu since its first version and has advanced quite a lot but regarding sound it went back wards some time ago, before version 9.04 because neither that not 9.10 work. I used Skype without problems some time ago. So is not the hardware it is the sound system. And there are quite some people who have the same problem.

By: Colin

Colin — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:04:02 +0000

I totally disagree with your figures there. 2% is very low. Both Windows (since XP) and OS X support multiple users logged in simultaneously very well. Are you suggesting that Linux should not support multiple user logins? If so, why do we bother having “users” at all. Why not just have a single “user” account?!!!

The multiple user concept is ingrained in Linux history and there is no reason to change this now – it’s still very useful. The design decisions made are also completely separate from the Audio stack per-se. The user session tracking system is Console Kit and has several uses beyond the audio stack. We just integrate into the systems that are there and to good effect.

If you follow any of the more recent trends in Linux you will see that multiple users (and also simultaneous active users via a multi-seat system) are very much issues that we need to deal with.

By: CasHew4

CasHew4 — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:34:48 +0000

Its sounds like you are ignoring the KISS formula in order to implement features that are required by less than 2% of the users. Multiple users logged in simultaneously on one desktop computer? Come on now, how often does this happen? Many of the “modern desktop requirements” that you insist on are actally needed by very few users. Needless complexity usually results in chaos that negates any advances.

By: Colin

Colin — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:43:33 +0000

Well this is sadly the kind of reply that is so common from people who really don’t understand how open source software works. PulseAudio has certainly had it’s problems, no-one (myself included) has denied that, but these problems have typically fallen into two categories: integration issues (e.g. the fault of the distro) or driver issues (due to new features exposed in the low level ALSA drivers that no other ALSA client has used before). Both of these issues have been largely addressed these days, although obviously some problems still remain.
PulseAudio has now been adopted by the major distributions, which means that it is now getting a lot of exposure and testing. It is this exposure and testing that drives the bug fixes that are needed. Without a critical mass, corner cases are missed and obscure hardware is not fixed at the driver level. OSSv4 has simply not had the exposure needed to be able to make a “it just works” statement hold water. I cannot and will not accept such a statement without seeing either a detailed study of the testing procedure and hardware used, or until it reaches a critical mass and has been in used for a reasonable period of time. The bugs exposed in the ALSA drivers by the later versions of PA (0.9.11+) take advantage of advanced timing feedback from the driver layer in a way that will save power. This is something that OSSv4 cannot do, and thus a comparison is not like for like… do more advanced things, expect more bugs during the initial stages: this is what is expected. Sure there are teething problems but it doesn’t mean the fundamental architecture or thinking is flawed.
Like it or not, the OSS API is dying. It’s already being disabled by default on the major Linux distros and there is no chance of having two competing audio driver infrastructures in the kernel, ALSA has won there.
If you really care about making Linux audio better, then you should just abandon OSS evangelism and help make the tools that are being used now better. Even if OSSv4 were better (I don’t believe it is personally, but it is irrelevant here), sometimes you just have to admit defeat… Betamax had it’s little ass kicked by VHS if you remember!

By: J Story

J Story — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:38:10 +0000

Funny. You say: “So the people who talk about OSSv4 and how it can do mixing and per-app volume control and how this means that ALSA and PulseAudio are not needed are totally underestimating what’s needed in a modern audio stack.” But what you seem to misunderstand is that OSSv4 actually works.

Excuse after excuse is offered why Pulseaudio doesn’t *really* suck, if only blah, blah, blah, and how terribly superior it is. However, the fact is that it does suck. OSSv4 has what I want — some of what pulseaudio claims to offer — and doesn’t have what I don’t want — no audio, skipping, pegged cpu — which pulseaudio delivers in spades. Are audio decisions for Linux distributions being made by masochists, that they prefer the polished turd?

By: Vermax

Vermax — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:31:40 +0000

In my opinion nobody who’s interested in supporting Linux should care about Unix’es. Their problems are their problems and why someone who’s only interested in supporting Linux should care about them? I’m talking for myself.

By: So how does the KDE PulseAudio support work anyway? « Colin.Guthr.ie

So how does the KDE PulseAudio support work anyway? « Colin.Guthr.ie — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:01:03 +0000

[...] So I hope I’ve provided a good and in-depth overview of how this support works. Please keep any comments on topic. If you want to post comments about PA in general, please do so on (and after reading!) this article. [...]

By: Colin

Colin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:09:53 +0000

Arts is a pain and needs to die. Thankfully it has. I’d recommend updating to KDE 4 and using my various patches to Phonon + KDE to make KDE4+Pulseaudio not suck: http://colin.guthr.ie/2009/10/kde-plus-pulseaudio-does-not-equal-sucks/

That said, arts can be made to run on top of PA, some people configure it to use ESD but personally I had good experience with just plain alsa output and no silly specific config. YMMV tho’.

By: Colin

Colin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:08:24 +0000

Well, I generally don’t allow anonymous posts, but I just wanted to correct my grammar. I found two cases where I’ve used “it’s” incorrectly. All other cases are contractions of “it is” or “it has” both of which are valid in my book. I’ve not counted but there were over 15 of such occurrences, so slightly higher than your “not a single” count.

Now with Linux you can say what you like about the development process but ultimately whose itch is going to get scratched? Your itch because you’re the end user, or mine because I’m the developer. Guess what? Mine comes first, because I’m the one doing it!!! If it happens to fit in with your itch, then great, lucky you. If not, maybe I’ll scratch it for you because I’m in a good mood, or maybe I need to scratch it to get to something else behind it.

Linux is not some commercial entity that must please it’s end users or obtain some benchmark of desktop penetration. It’s not marketed, it’s not market-driven. Sure there are commercial entities doing just that, but it’s not the driving force behind most developments. They are done because they are the right way to go. Adding in hacks left right and centre to behave correctly given bad input leads to the shitty situation today with the web browser market which have for too long tolerated crap input which leads to inconsistencies. The problems need to be addressed where they lie, not worked around, painting over the cracks. Call that finger pointing if you want, but that’s just ill informed at best and vindictive at worst.