Re: [gentoo-user] Removing pulseaudio

[Kevin Chadwick]

> the
> solution (in the GNOME developers view) is not to "remove PA", since
> the goal of the project is to cover *ALL* use cases.

I don't know the details of the pulseaudio implementation but I have a
hunch the problem boils down to blind arrogance and ignorance on the
part of the roots of the project.

Initially Lennart thought it truly would suit all including pro
audio users and as he has apparently stated he thinks all systems should
run dbus...endof. Knowing a bit about pro audio myself with my Dad
building his first Class A/B amp in his twenties it is not just
feasible but close to a guarantee that Lennart did not realise what
level of detail goes into pro audio including analysing cd players to
find they add timing issues and the windows mixer found to cause real
damage and need bypassing just like pulseaudio needs switching off
(windows being worse however). It is actually very easy to bypass on
Windows though, you just install whatever mixer comes with your pro
sound card driver.

There is nothing wrong with mis understanding the depth proaudio goes
to. The problem is coders should expect their software to be
replaceable and code with that in mind with the added benefit of
competition being good especially in a free software ecosystem where one
of the plusses has been avoiding user entrapment to make money.

As for Desktop distros, they make an understandable choice of PA by
default but what I especially don't understand and demonstrates the
dependency issue is getting much worse is why removing polkit on Ubuntu
means you lose.

KDE
Steam-launcher
nvidia-settings
pulseaudio
many many more..

All of which would function just fine and in most cases perfectly via
sudo.

Polkit tries to do two things well and fails at the second which sudo
does very well indeed, unfortunately many developers don't seem to
understand that.

Pulseaudio, well I am not sure if it is the design of pulseaudio and
lack of utilising universal interfaces or the programs that use it such
as Gnome and the packagers setting dependencies badly. Perhaps if
packagers were more careful there would be less work for Gentoo in
trying to give users choice and more reason for Gnome not to depend upon
a package.


-- 
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'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work
together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a
universal interface'

(Doug McIlroy)
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