Just give me files I can write data into and suddenly everything becomes very easy. Everybody knows how to write files.
I know this discussion is getting really old but when Alsa was a step in the wrong direction, Pulse was the highspeed train in the wrong direction that followed, trying to "fix" it. This overengineered mess is the result of the tragedy allowing former Windows users to do systems programming for Unix like operating systems.
He writes: A rich API provides methods for inspecting and controlling all available objects and their run-time and persistent properties. This makes it possible to replace configuration files with GUI tools. Many desktop environments provide such tools. That is wrong, if I don't misunderstand it. It does not matter much for the possibility of GUI tools whether they talk to an API or whether they parse and write confi…
There is a difference. Writing to config files doesn’t set properties at runtime.
PulseAudio needs to allow UI tools to set properties with sub-second latency.
And just reparsing the configs every time something is changed would be extremely wasteful.
It took me about a month of on/off attempts to get audio to stop routing through HDMI every time my desktop came out of suspend and I still have a basic understanding on how the audio system works on my machine. While I praise the open source community for everything they've done it's still really hard for even an advanced user to understand how things work. Its flabbergasting at how it has reached this situation.
That's odd. I found my Linux system always got HDMI audio right while Windows always got it wrong. I seem to recall I was able to force VLC to go to the right place by adding it to a config file, but the system sound never did work right on Windows...I had to manually select HDMI every time it got plugged back in.
You had the wrong default selected in Windows mixer.
Need to select it as default when plugged and whenever it gets replugged it retake its priority. Works as expected with multiple default / temporarily plugged devices.
Loads of complexity. I don't see the value. Just give me files I can write data into and suddenly everything becomes very easy. Everybody knows how to write files. I know this discussion is getting really old but when Alsa was a step in the wrong direction, Pulse was the highspeed train in the wrong direction that followed, trying to "fix" it. This overengineered mess is the result of the tragedy allowing former Wind…
PulseAudio is the only audio system I have used that can stop recognizing output hardware (on the motherboard!) without a reboot. On the worst of its competitors, you can be assured that once you get it working, it continues to work at least until reboot, and usually until you change config or upgrade the wrong package.
PulseAudio posts are always filled with naysayers; the vast vast vast majority of users (like systemd in this regard) have no idea it's even running and just get on with whatever they're doing.
I've primarily run Linux over the last fifteen or so years and barely had an issue that's directly PA's fault.
I remember the bad old days where a playlist would finish and then GAIM's notification sound would bleat fifteen times. PA saw an end to that.
It took me about a month of on/off attempts to get audio to stop routing through HDMI every time my desktop came out of suspend and I still have a basic understanding on how the audio system works on my machine. While I praise the open source community for everything they've done it's still really hard for even an advanced user to understand how things work. Its flabbergasting at how it has reached this situation.
That's odd. I found my Linux system always got HDMI audio right while Windows always got it wrong. I seem to recall I was able to force VLC to go to the right place by adding it to a config file, but the system sound never did work right on Windows...I had to manually select HDMI every time it got plugged back in.
I can second that. I'm by no means a fan of PulseAudio, I got bitten by it many times in the past, but my experience with Windows and audio over HDMI has been at least as bad. Even with a fully updated Windows 10 and a bog-standard on-board audio chip, Windows consistently messes up my speaker configuration or randomly mutes the audio. Particularly after updates it regularly forgets that I have a 5.1 receiver hooked up over HDMI and defaults back to stereo, and I have to re-configure it again.
It took me about a month of on/off attempts to get audio to stop routing through HDMI every time my desktop came out of suspend and I still have a basic understanding on how the audio system works on my machine. While I praise the open source community for everything they've done it's still really hard for even an advanced user to understand how things work. Its flabbergasting at how it has reached this situation.
I felt like that when I couldn't configure GNOME to shutdown when I hit the power-button on my chassis, I could only pick to suspend. It is not possible to change the power settings and it was removed by the GNOME developers[0] (the shutdown/power off action was considered too destructive[1]). Bottom line: You can no longer power off your laptop by pressing the power off button. [0] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bu…
Well, technically you can still power it down with the power button, but that's not so graceful to say the least.
It took me about a month of on/off attempts to get audio to stop routing through HDMI every time my desktop came out of suspend and I still have a basic understanding on how the audio system works on my machine. While I praise the open source community for everything they've done it's still really hard for even an advanced user to understand how things work. Its flabbergasting at how it has reached this situation.
I am quite surprised that PulseAudio has a bad reputation. I couldn't get ALSA working on Arch Linux, and simply installing PulseAudio resolved all my issues.
From the sentiment here I get the feeling that it might stop working any moment.