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Anti Leonard Poettering petition: Stop writing useless linux programs.

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Re: Anti Leonard Poettering petition: Stop writing useless linux programs.

#32
post #2

"You seem to know a lot of stuff about me. I am not particular fond of people who turn their dislike of software I wrote into personal accusations and judging in a public forum." - Lennart Poettering Sep 21, 2008 http://lwn.net/Articles/299615/ For what it's worth, 4 years on I still struggle daily with audio and only audio on Linux. I'm not in a position to tell if it's ALSA or PulseAudio that makes nothing come out…

How I fixed Audio on Linux: Removed anything whatsoever to do with Pulseaudio. Got myself a decent sound card (Presonus FP10) Set up JACK as the permanent sound-manager on my system Set up an ALSA Loop for anything that couldn't use JACK but did use ALSA

I've had a rock-solid, reliable, stable, easy to use Audio subsystem on my professional-quality Linux-based DAW workstation, running my studio, for years ..

Pulseaudio was a total and utter waste of time.

Re: Anti Leonard Poettering petition: Stop writing useless linux programs.

#34
post #10
post #2

"You seem to know a lot of stuff about me. I am not particular fond of people who turn their dislike of software I wrote into personal accusations and judging in a public forum." - Lennart Poettering Sep 21, 2008 http://lwn.net/Articles/299615/ For what it's worth, 4 years on I still struggle daily with audio and only audio on Linux. I'm not in a position to tell if it's ALSA or PulseAudio that makes nothing come out…

Why does nobody else create a better sound system?

ALSA already is the better sound system as long as you don't need all your applications to have one extra redundant volume control or playing audio on a remote computer over the internet. However de-pulsifying a linux install correctly isn't easy.

Re: Anti Leonard Poettering petition: Stop writing useless linux programs.

#35
post #9
post #3

What's the back story here?

Lennart is a Fedora dev known for writing replacements for linux subsystems. For example, he started PulseAudio and systemd, a replacement for init. Recently, he's suggested a replacement for syslog where the logs aren't written as plain text. I would guess the last one was the impetus for this petition.

I don't understand what the big deal is. If his systems aren't useful distros won't adopt them and no harm is done. If they are useful and distros adopt them then he has advanced the state of the entire Linux community.

This petition seems childish.

Re: Anti Leonard Poettering petition: Stop writing useless linux programs.

#36
post #19

Blaming Lennart (not Leonard!) is a bit counterproductive. There's a general tendency in the desktop Linux community to rewrite components every few years, rather than improving what exists. I guess this is mainly caused by the failure of Linux as a commercial desktop. Except for heroic efforts by Red Hat, SUSE, and previously Sun, it's mostly a hobbyist affair. As a hobby, people prefer to do the fun work, not the t…

The failure of Linux as a commercial desktop is also (not entirely, of course) his responsibility, considering the crap he pulled with all the desktop components he messed with (PulseAudio, HAL, DBUS etc etc), so clearly it's not a causal factor for his behaviour.

Linux user since 1999, redhat 6.2 days I think, kernel 2.2. Messed with getting audio to work on an old ISA card, setting some ports in some config files, recompiling the kernel. I got it working, no big deal, even from several sources at the same time, with no artsD or esd, but I did try those to just for fun.

Invested same amount of time and effort, still have only horrible memories of pulseaudio. I shiver anytime I see puslea. Argh.arhgh.why,.asdhj as.

Re: Anti Leonard Poettering petition: Stop writing useless linux programs.

#37
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The failure of Linux as a commercial desktop is also (not entirely, of course) his responsibility, considering the crap he pulled with all the desktop components he messed with (PulseAudio, HAL, DBUS etc etc), so clearly it's not a causal factor for his behaviour.

I think the 'failure' of the commercial Linux desktop can mostly be attributed to economics. Most importantly, consumers do not want to pay for a desktop operating system (even if it were proprietary). Microsoft effectively shut down the alternative market by making Windows-hardware coupling mandatory for large hardware vendors. This gives the perception (through scale and coupling) that Windows is nearly free. So, w…

"Microsoft effectively shut down the alternative market by making Windows-hardware coupling mandatory for large hardware vendors."

How did they do that, how?!

That is exactly why GNU/Linux on the desktop isnt used by more people.

Re: Anti Leonard Poettering petition: Stop writing useless linux programs.

#38
post #9
post #3

What's the back story here?

Lennart is a Fedora dev known for writing replacements for linux subsystems. For example, he started PulseAudio and systemd, a replacement for init. Recently, he's suggested a replacement for syslog where the logs aren't written as plain text. I would guess the last one was the impetus for this petition.

A non-plain text syslog? That sounds stupid to me. Plain text is one of the reasons I love Unix in the first place.

Re: Anti Leonard Poettering petition: Stop writing useless linux programs.

#39
post #34
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does nobody else create a better sound system?

ALSA already is the better sound system as long as you don't need all your applications to have one extra redundant volume control or playing audio on a remote computer over the internet. However de-pulsifying a linux install correctly isn't easy.

" or playing audio on a remote computer over the internet".

I thought thats the point of pulseaudio and really wanted to try it.

How can I say... it FAILS at even that! I got it working with ssh and mpd faster than... oh dont make remember.

Re: Anti Leonard Poettering petition: Stop writing useless linux programs.

#40

Honestly, I don't understand why move this personal attack against Lennart. From my point of view he just wrote pieces of software he deemed necessary. I would rather put the blame on distributions other than Fedora¹ for trying to integrate his stuff early and poorly (thus starting a chain-reaction which caused even more distributions to rush with integration attempts). I think he's getting a lot of flak for choices…

He could have improved esd or jack. But no.
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