> WAIT you NEVER had an audio problem in Linux before PulseAudio?
To be fair, I didn't say I never had Linux audio issues prior to Pulseaudio (whereas I did say that about FreeBSD.)
Back in '98, my SB16 ISA card would only output sound at 8-bit monaural under mikmod, and I could only play CD-audio with that passthrough cable between the CD-ROM drive and the sound card. Once I was able to get sound working well enough, the only way I was able to play MIDIs was through Timidity and Soundfont emulation. And until ALSA, there was obviously pain whenever two things would want to play sound at the same time. This of course was due to the OSSv3 author changing the license before introducing his own audio mixing, and all of those awful sound server daemons (esd et al) never really worked, since there were multiple daemons and each application wanted different daemons or just wanted to stab right at the OSSv3 ioctl's.
But once ALSA was established and working, yes. Audio under Linux at that point worked just fine for me. Pulseaudio was a solution looking for a problem.
> (Previously a Sound Engineer and Record Studio owner)
I won't claim to be either of these. I like to listen to music while I write code, I'll occasionally watch some movies or play some games, and I want Pidgin to make a chime when someone sends me a message.
In particular, I'm very sensitive to latency in gaming (emulation), but that's about the extent of what I need speaker sound output for.
> What people are complaining about is the philosophy aspect.
To me, the worst part is the backroom politics, the complete disregard for portability, and the lock-in effects of consuming other daemons and services, and making software dependent upon it.
However, I do also object to the design itself, as well as to the developers responsible for working on the project, and the attitude of disdain they present to the community at large.