
PulseAudio 8.0 released - captn3m0
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/pulseaudio-discuss/2016-January/025277.html
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captn3m0
I saw this project the other day for alsa-refugees who have to run apps only
supporting pulseaudio (some of my games, skype): apulse. It emulates
pulseaudio for the given app.

[0]: [https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse](https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse)

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baldfat
For what benefit? PulseAudio is MUCH better then alsa ever was.

I know the launch of PulseAudio was horrible with Ubuntu and Fedora
implementation was just horrible but that was 10 years ago. Now PusleAudio has
made Linux Audio much better then it ever was before.

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creshal
PulseAudio _uses_ ALSA under the hood. You're dealing with all the problems of
ALSA, _and_ have a brittle, crashing, overly complex userspace daemon sitting
on top of it.

If you don't need any of PA's features, why bother with it?

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baldfat
Linux audio is leaps and bounds better then it ever was. ALSO ALSA is not a
dependency for PulseAudio it uses ALSO uses OSS which after version OSS 4 it
has become my sound interface.

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bg46z
This is pretty exciting. There have been loads of stability issues in the
past, and it's always nice to see those issues addressed. I like the systemd
integration too, that's a nice touch.

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LeoPanthera
Is it usable without systemd? It seems like Linux is getting harder and harder
to use without it, to the point where "A Linux system" _is_ systemd.

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Isn0gud
What is so bad about systemd?

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jcranmer
There's basically three non-reasons to hate systemd which crop up the most:
1\. Its lead author is a bit of an asshole, plus lingering resentment from
Pulseaudio. 2\. Systemd is not sysvinit, so some of the system administration
people learned doesn't translate. 3\. Systemd contains functionality that
people don't think it should have (usually presented without any argumentation
as to why it shouldn't incorporate those features, so it tends to come across
as akin to saying that Firefox is bad because web browsers shouldn't have
video players built in).

The main reason that does come up that's not really a non-reason (but, I
should note, is hard for me to validate as a dispassionate neutral observer)
is a fear that systemd is being rammed down users' throats against their
wills, partly by distros deciding "there's no alternative" and partly by
systemd incorporating ever more tools.

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baldfat
It also is people holding onto the 1970s Unix system architecture and
philosophy. Linux is Unix like and systemd is just a better modern system, but
others philosophy on systems just won't allow them to support it.

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digi_owl
I would not mind systemd, except that logind depends on systemd-init, and DEs
are increasingly dependent on logind for various reasons.

For example, more recent versions of upower are just a wrapper around logind.
Thus to have a laptop sleep when you close the lib, you need to replace your
init process.

Do that in any way sound sane?

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digi_owl
Does it still default to "flat volume" active?

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baghira
Yes, according to the config file `src/daemon/daemon.conf.in` in the tarball.

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digi_owl
I'll keep using straight ALSA then, as at least there it will not blow my ear
drums if i forget to tweak the settings before first use.

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baghira
I don't think they'll change it anytime soon. I don't like it at all, and I
agree that it is almost dangerous, even though I sort of understand the
rationale seeing how non-technical users handle volumes.

It's also kinda of hard to expose in a GUI: a checkbox with "Flat Volumes" is
not really self-explanatory. For now I've just added .config/pulse/daemon.conf
the config files I drag from one installation to the next.

~~~
digi_owl
Non-technical people do a whole lot of strange things. But then i likely do so
to in the eyes of someone formally trained in computer operations. Frankly i
have learned to grin and bear with them, thanks to being tech support for my
parents for over a decade.

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bloggerden
Can't wait to try this out

