Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem

[Alan McKinnon]

On Thursday 20 May 2010 10:40:33 Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 05/20/2010 11:15 AM, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > On Wednesday 19 May 2010 23:56:39 walt wrote:


[snip]

> >> Well, since I'm first to answer I get to inject my prejudices first :)
> >>
> >> I think pulse is a very long answer to a very short question and so I
> >> did away with it months ago.  And I haven't regretted it.
> >>
> >> Truly, I think very few people need pulse outside of professionals who
> >> work in film or music.  The main reason others have disagreed with my
> >> opinion is because your silly desktop sounds like beeps and boings and
> >> toilets flushing interrupt the CD you're listening to.  Uh, well, yeah,
> >> one sound generally interrupts another, true.  So what?
> >>
> >> I'll bet your audio would do what you expect it to do if you just
> >> removed every trace of pulse from your machine and run revdep-rebuild
> >> with the pulse, arts, and esd useflags disabled (if those flags still
> >> exist).
> >>
> >> Contrary opinions will follow shortly ;)
> >
> > No, I don't think they will :-)
>
> Well, here is one :P
>
> "Uh, well, yeah, one sound generally interrupts another, true."
>
> That is not true.  ALSA (most people use that one) has dmix, which mixes
> all sounds from all applications together.  You don't need PulseAudio
> for that.

PulseAudio does indeed have it's uses. Some folks really do want fine-grained 
control over each daemon using the sound system, but those folks are not the 
set of average users.

Feature-wise, ALSA pretty much does everything the *average* user wants, and 
that user does not really want to schlepp sound over the network or tweak 
every individual thing making noises.

Now ALSA may or may not have good-quality code in it but that's another 
matter. We are discussing features.

Like an earlier poster suggested, PulseAudio looks like a hammer in search of 
a nail.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com