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PulseAudio and Systemd Creator, Lennart Poettering, Reportedly Leaves Red Hat

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Re: PulseAudio and Systemd Creator, Lennart Poettering, Reportedly Leaves Red Hat

#11

Post by zh3 »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #6

He can easily hop ship wherever he wants given the major impact he's landed in PulseAudio, Systemd and elsewhere. His design decisions have certainly been controversial but his impact is certainly agreed upon.

Eh, Pulseaudio. One of those things that on the rare occasion it's worked out of the box it's then broken with one step of the beaten path.

Evidently it seems to work for many people, the trouble it's caused has far outweighed any benefit (plus I know quite a few people dropped firefox for chrome when it went pulseaudio only - is that still the case?).

Re: PulseAudio and Systemd Creator, Lennart Poettering, Reportedly Leaves Red Hat

#12

Post by iasay »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #6

He can easily hop ship wherever he wants given the major impact he's landed in PulseAudio, Systemd and elsewhere. His design decisions have certainly been controversial but his impact is certainly agreed upon.

> His design decisions have certainly been controversial but his impact is certainly agreed upon.

I can think of many historical figures that fit that description.

Re: PulseAudio and Systemd Creator, Lennart Poettering, Reportedly Leaves Red Hat

#13

Post by iasay »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #10
humanwhosits wrote: post #8

Interested to see what he chooses to work on now

Maybe he's turning to the graphic stack (eg a grand unified graphics driver architecture), or redoes large parts of the kernel in Rust ;) Or something like that; I've got a hard time thinking what could be challenging enough seeing as, though controversial his creations are, he sure is able to deliver.

At least we will know to steer clear of it until he stops winning Pwnies.

Re: PulseAudio and Systemd Creator, Lennart Poettering, Reportedly Leaves Red Hat

#14

Post by klodolph »

zh3 wrote: post #11
alfalfasprout wrote: post #6

He can easily hop ship wherever he wants given the major impact he's landed in PulseAudio, Systemd and elsewhere. His design decisions have certainly been controversial but his impact is certainly agreed upon.

Eh, Pulseaudio. One of those things that on the rare occasion it's worked out of the box it's then broken with one step of the beaten path. Evidently it seems to work for many people, the trouble it's caused has far outweighed any benefit (plus I know quite a few people dropped firefox for chrome when it went pulseaudio only - is that still the case?).

I don't know what kind of audio configurations you've lived with.

I do remember when PulseAudio seemed to be the source of many problems, but this was over a decade ago.

One of the big problems is that the Linux audio stack is built out of components that rely on assumptions about the next lower level of the stack that are often untrue. You might assume that your audio hardware has a volume control, assume it can perform mixing, assume it doesn't change configuration, assume there's only one user, assume (or want to assume) it has a specific sample rate, etc. PulseAudio papers over this stuff and deals with permissions, so your applications can actually work.

If you have sufficiently boring PC hardware and sufficiently boring use cases, the audio will just kind of work anyway, without PulseAudio.

Linux audio has more than its fair share of problems in the stack, but in my experience, PulseAudio is more of a solver of problems and less of a source of problems.

Re: PulseAudio and Systemd Creator, Lennart Poettering, Reportedly Leaves Red Hat

#15

Post by kyruzic »

zh3 wrote: post #11
alfalfasprout wrote: post #6

He can easily hop ship wherever he wants given the major impact he's landed in PulseAudio, Systemd and elsewhere. His design decisions have certainly been controversial but his impact is certainly agreed upon.

Eh, Pulseaudio. One of those things that on the rare occasion it's worked out of the box it's then broken with one step of the beaten path. Evidently it seems to work for many people, the trouble it's caused has far outweighed any benefit (plus I know quite a few people dropped firefox for chrome when it went pulseaudio only - is that still the case?).

Pulseaudio is one of the absolute best parts of Linux.

Have fun routing audio from one stream to one device and another stream to a different device on Windows or macos!

Re: PulseAudio and Systemd Creator, Lennart Poettering, Reportedly Leaves Red Hat

#16

Post by gnulinux »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #6

He can easily hop ship wherever he wants given the major impact he's landed in PulseAudio, Systemd and elsewhere. His design decisions have certainly been controversial but his impact is certainly agreed upon.

I've been using linux for decades and by far -- by a HUGE margin -- PulseAudio has been the most annoying and broken thing I had to use. I'm still baffled by how something as basic as audio output can be eternally fragile in linux! And before you say you might have quirky hardware: my daily laptop is a Lenovo X1 Carbon 7th gen.

Now (since 2021) I use PipeWire and tbh do not know to what extent pulseaudio codebase is still utilized in my system but it all just works now.

Re: PulseAudio and Systemd Creator, Lennart Poettering, Reportedly Leaves Red Hat

#18

Post by robonerd »

kyruzic wrote: post #15
zh3 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, Pulseaudio. One of those things that on the rare occasion it's worked out of the box it's then broken with one step of the beaten path. Evidently it seems to work for many people, the trouble it's caused has far outweighed any benefit (plus I know quite a few people dropped firefox for chrome when it went pulseaudio only - is that still the case?).

Pulseaudio is one of the absolute best parts of Linux. Have fun routing audio from one stream to one device and another stream to a different device on Windows or macos!

> Have fun routing audio from one stream to one device and another stream to a different device on Windows or macos!

I can do that with pulseaudio, but it's not fun.

Re: PulseAudio and Systemd Creator, Lennart Poettering, Reportedly Leaves Red Hat

#19

Post by robonerd »

klodolph wrote: post #14
zh3 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, Pulseaudio. One of those things that on the rare occasion it's worked out of the box it's then broken with one step of the beaten path. Evidently it seems to work for many people, the trouble it's caused has far outweighed any benefit (plus I know quite a few people dropped firefox for chrome when it went pulseaudio only - is that still the case?).

I don't know what kind of audio configurations you've lived with. I do remember when PulseAudio seemed to be the source of many problems, but this was over a decade ago. One of the big problems is that the Linux audio stack is built out of components that rely on assumptions about the next lower level of the stack that are often untrue. You might assume that your audio hardware has a volume control, assume it can per…

> If you have sufficiently boring PC hardware and sufficiently boring use cases, the audio will just kind of work anyway, without PulseAudio.

Introducing breakage, complexity and general fragility to the common case, which was previously working fine, will obviously make a whole lot of people upset.

Re: PulseAudio and Systemd Creator, Lennart Poettering, Reportedly Leaves Red Hat

#20

Post by corrral »

gnulinux wrote: post #16
alfalfasprout wrote: post #6

He can easily hop ship wherever he wants given the major impact he's landed in PulseAudio, Systemd and elsewhere. His design decisions have certainly been controversial but his impact is certainly agreed upon.

I've been using linux for decades and by far -- by a HUGE margin -- PulseAudio has been the most annoying and broken thing I had to use. I'm still baffled by how something as basic as audio output can be eternally fragile in linux! And before you say you might have quirky hardware: my daily laptop is a Lenovo X1 Carbon 7th gen. Now (since 2021) I use PipeWire and tbh do not know to what extent pulseaudio codebase is…

Ubuntu's adoption of it was what pushed me away from Desktop Linux, after about a decade of being mainly a Linux user. Suddenly the one thing that had actually Just Worked for almost that entire decade, became unstable, unpredictable, and, to add insult to injury, ate tons of memory and processor cycles for unclear and likely unjustifiable reasons.
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