Re: [gentoo-user] Removing pulseaudio

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Canek.

On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 02:09:46PM -0500, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@×××.de> wrote:

> Hi Alan.

> > On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 12:02:38PM -0500, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
> >> On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 11:29 AM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@×××.de> wrote:
> >> [snip]

> > Anytime a free software project drops support for something, it
> > forces its users to make choices.  Yes, force.

> I don't think that's true, since we are not paying anyone to do the
> work (well, at least for sure I'm not paying anyone to do anything).
> They (the developers) don't owe us *anything*.

In a sense, no.  But in another very important sense, yes.  Without that
sense of duty, of obligation, on the part of developers over the last few
decades, GNU, Linux, X, BSD, ... would scarcely rate as more than toys.

[ ..... ]

> If you want to get into morals, this will become a religious argument,
> and sorry but I'm not interested in that.

Fair enough!  

> > The prime one is to support their users.

> No; the prime one is to do their jobs. Most of them are employed by
> several of the available Open Source supporting companies; their
> responsibilities is to do the job they are being paid to do. If they
> are hobbyist, then their prime "responsibility" is to do whatever the
> hell they want to (and gets accepted in a community project).

Again, fair enough.  But that's just as "religious" a viewpoint as my
own.

> >  You'll surely have noticed that what gets up the
> > noses of people on this mailing list most is when support for reasonable
> > configurations gets dropped.  Witness all the recent trouble over eth0,
> > for example.

> What problem? I use NetworkManager in desktop and laptop; there is no
> problem there. I read the instructions in my media center and servers:
> no problems there. I don't particularly like the new funny names, but
> I don't write the code, and the fruits from it I get for free, so I
> don't complain about it.

Some Gentooers had problems over this change.  I didn't have "problems"
as such, but the time spent not having these problems could, I feel, have
been better spent.

> > If you were serious about this exponential growth, how on earth could,
> > e.g., the Linux kernel or Emacs, both with thousands of options[*],
> > possibly get tested anywhere near acceptably?

> > [*] 12,666 in Linux 3.7.10, 7,510 in vanilla Emacs 24.3.

> Because they have enough integration testers. They have enough
> interested users to do the required testing; the kernel and Emacs is
> oriented towards technical apt users. The stated goal of the GNOME
> project is that even my grandmother could use it.

I understand what you're saying.  In the limit, this tight integration
will lead to a system barely capable of being customised.  It will be as
inflexible as MS Windows always has been.  Will your GM want to use such
a system?

[ .... ]

> > What about the needs of those high-end audio users, for example, who need
> > jack?

> There are several success stories about mixing PA with Jack; you can
> Google them. I don't see the problem.

I'm not an expert on jack, but I gather it's high-endedness implies very
low latency, for example.  Feeding a signal through pulseaudio as well
would negate the whole purpose of jack.  Maybe.

> > What about those, like me, with audio problems, where the need exists to
> > strip a system down so as to isolate those problems?

> As I said below: if PA has problems, they need to be fixed. Did you
> report the bugs?

I don't even know where the bug is.  It's somewhere in my audio.  It
might be in Firefox 17.0.5.  It might be in pulseaudio, though having
been able to remove it, I doubt it.  It might be in ALSA.  My point is,
in a tightly integrated system, my chances of fixing the problem would be
that much slimmer.  I don't experience the problem in my fossilised mdev
system from last summer.

> >> If PA has bugs in some configuration, those bugs need to be fixed; the
> >> solution (in the GNOME developers view) is not to "remove PA", since
> >> the goal of the project is to cover *ALL* use cases.

> > pulseaudio is a server component - gnome is an application.  They are at
> > different levels of the system hierarchy, just as a mail transport agent
> > and mail user agent are.  The maintainers of mutt don't force the use of,
> > say, postfix.  By long tradition on *nix, sysadmins configure their own
> > systems, selecting those components which best fit their needs.  gnome's
> > decision to mandate pulseaudio interferes with this tradition.  IMAO,
> > this is a Bad Thing.

> GNOME is a desktop environment, and it wants (from some years now) a
> vertical integration from kernel to the last userspace application. I
> root for that.

That would probably be an environment I couldn't configure to work the
way I want.  Gnome and I will likely be parting company in the coming
years.

> And I have been using Unix since 1996, and I don't care about what
> *nix "long traditions" are. I want a Linux system that works from my
> cellphone to my big iron server, and everything in between. I don't
> even care about *BSD; I don't wish them any ill, but I don't care
> about them.

You can't have a single Linux which works equally well on all these
disparate systems.  Equally badly, perhaps.  Look at the problems which
MS Windows-8 is having, and it only tries desktops/laptops and 'phones.

> If you don't agree with that, that's fine; but if a big enough set of
> developers thinks similarly, several projects will move in that
> direction. It's already happening.

Yes.  I doubt it will end prettily.

[ .... ]

> and then the only required dependency for systemd will be Linux.

> Man, that will be a nice day.

Will you still be able to configure your system as you wish, though?

> Regards.
> --
> Canek Peláez Valdés

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).