Feature changed by: Antonio Cervone (capitalaslash) Feature #305888, revision 2 Title: Disable PulseAudio by default openSUSE-11.2: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Mandatory Requested by: Alberto Passalacqua (albertop) Description: PulseAudio has been one of the major sources of complaints and of problems for both the 11.0 and 11.1 release, with significant annoyances for openSUSE users, as reported on IRC and on local forums. As a consequence it is worth to consider the possibility to disable it by default on freshly installed systems for openSUSE 11.2. This enhancement request aims to collect the votes of those who agree with this. According to a discussion in IRC with coolo, if there are enough requests, this might be done. So, please, if you want to see PA disabled by default, in favour of a working audio system out of the box for many more users, just comment here. Relations: - Disable PulseAudio by default (novell/bugzilla/id: 478511) https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=478511 Discussion: #1: Criss Peress (pieris) (2009-02-22 12:52:19) +1 #2: Jakub Rusinek (liviopl) (2009-02-22 13:31:25) You should have a look at what Lennart says on pulseaudio-discuss list [1], 'cause this might be important for openSUSE. 1| https://tango.0pointer.de/pipermail/pulseaudio-discuss/2009-February/003150.... #3: Luigi Bettin (gigi888) (2009-02-22 13:55:58) +1 #4: Alberto Passalacqua (albertop) (2009-02-22 14:23:28) On comment #2: that has nothing to do with this discussion. Please keep it on topic! Fedora, cited in the link as the distribution doing something in the suggested direction, has similar complaints to those we had for openSUSE 11.0 and 11.1. Bye, A. #5: andrea florio (anubisg1) (2009-02-22 16:57:39) +1 for me #6: andrea martin (il_cjargnel) (2009-02-22 23:54:03) +1 for me (no pulse audio of default in 11.2) #7: Takashi Iwai (tiwai) (2009-02-23 01:07:08) Guys, the bugzilla is no place for voting or discussions, and it's no user forum. It's the place to report a bug and fix the bug. Please vote/discuss on ML at first. Then report back the result to bugzilla as the consensus of the whole community. Thanks. #8: Sven Burmeister (rabauke) (2009-02-23 04:28:01) I do not see any discussion here. Enabling pa by default can be regarded as a bug and not doing so as an enhancement people vote on. Bugzilla is about bugs/enhancements (not features) and voting. #9: Alberto Passalacqua (albertop) (2009-02-23 07:22:54) In answer to comment #7: This is an enhancement request, and bugzilla is exactly the place where this kind of discussion, to collect votes for it. Further discussion happened in the IRC anyway, and this bug report was opened as a consequence of it to collect user's feedback in a clean and organized manner, so that the decisionmaker can decide without reading an endless discussion in a mailing-list. As a consequence I reopen it. Regards, A. #10: Alberto Passalacqua (albertop) (2009-02-23 07:26:33) @Takashi Iwai: You might want to take part to the IRC life of openSUSE and discuss with us. Any suggestion/help is welcome! :-) #11: Takashi Iwai (tiwai) (2009-02-23 07:43:54) Could you give the exact voting result here? (And, no I'm not going to join IRC just for this purpose.) The vote must be done in an open way, and needs to take from a wide range of voters (users) without bias. Voting in bugzilla doesn't make sense for this kind of issue because the bugzilla (a specific bug entry) isn't the place where every user takes a look. It's the place where the people with the same problems take a look. Thus, of course, it will result in votes just by haters. Also, the endless discussion in ML is the result you have to respect. If there is no clear sign in the discussions in ML, it means there is no clear way to go, too. The rest is the political decision, and not about technical ones (remember KDE vs GNOME). So, please give more concrete technical issues rather than emotional +1/-1 votes. #12: Michael Skiba (mirrakor) (2009-02-23 10:03:31)
So, please give more concrete technical issues rather than emotional +1/-1 votes. There's nothing emotional about it. It's the place where the people with the same problems take a look. Thus, of course, it will result in votes just by haters. Which is exactly the point - this isn't an open "opinion poll" it's about messuring how big the disturbances/problems (->bug) with PA really is, and if it affects enough people it's worth thinking about disabling it by default.
#13: Alberto Passalacqua (albertop) (2009-02-23 10:07:28) Hi Takashi, the result of the voting, done with the usual procedure to vote bugs and requests, can be read at the top of the page. Currently this request has 27 votes. Each user can give a maximum of five votes. I probably wasn't clear in the initial post. We discussed to disable PA on IRC, and coolo suggested that is can be done if there is a sufficient number of requests. I don't know what "sufficient" means, but I thought it would have been easier to collect the votes in a quantitative manner here, using bugzilla features. I think it is important to notice that I'm not asking to remove PulseAudio, but to simply disable it by default, so that users don't meet the problems it is causing to them. PulseAudio can be already be disabled with one click in YaST, and the same can done to enable it again. My idea is that we should not activate it by default, because for 11.0 and 11.1 releases we had quite a lot of complaints due to it. Users who want it will be able to enable it with a simple click, but the new unexperienced user won't have to fight to make it work to listen to his music, which will result in a better image of the distribution that "works out of the box" and at the same time provides "the latest stack" for those who want/need it. The concrete technical issues are the following (I sum up what reported): - PA audio glitches often. - It gives troubles with Flash and other players, which capture the server, making other applications unable to work correctly. - It crashes, leaving you without controls on the audio system (Connection refused). - It doesn't work properly with some player and sound tool (someone reported issues with audacity, skype (I know it's skype problem but people wants to use it) gives problems too). Anyway, if you prefer, we can post the link on the ML to make it available to a wider public. I simply fear it will become noisy. I already spread it on IRC when I opened the request. P.S. My invitation on IRC was friendly. If you don't like it, there is no problem. But I'm serious when I say that suggestions are welcome. After all we are here to improve things, and not to fight between us :- ) Regards, Alberto #14: Daniele Tombolini (kailed) (2009-02-23 11:47:18) +1 at least, under kde is unuseful. #15: Takashi Iwai (tiwai) (2009-02-23 12:11:37) OK, then I reassign this bug to coolo. Please reassign back after the decision is made. My position is neutral about this. I myself don't use PA, and I won't. But I do understand that some (other) people want PA as default, too. #16: alberto rossi (al9000) (2009-02-23 12:13:09) no to pulseaudio by default in opensuse 11.2 #17: Rajko Matovic (rajko_m) (2009-02-23 13:17:47) This is discussion about this enhancement request: http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2009-02/msg00208.html #18: Alberto Passalacqua (albertop) (2009-02-23 13:21:34) FYI, opened a discussion here so the interested people can say their opinion and we can collect more feedback: http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2009-02/msg00208.html A. #19: Vincent Untz (vuntz) (2009-02-23 14:47:36) Stupid question, if people think that the votes on this bug can be taken into account for the decision: how can people vote to keep pulseaudio? IMHO, bugzilla is not the right place for this -- this is not an enhancement request, this is a technical decision. Starting a thread on opensuse-factory was a good thing, though :-) #20: Andras Barna (sartek) (2009-02-23 19:59:13) for me alsa worked perfectly, so why change it.. so +1 #21: Jigish Gohil (cyberorg) (2009-02-23 22:45:22) Can we get kernel people look into the points raised in link posted on comment #2? https://tango.0pointer.de/pipermail/pulseaudio-discuss/2009-February/003150.... Quoting relevant parts from that post for everyone's benefit here. "Apparently OpenSUSE ships a kernel (2.6.27.7-9-pae) that causes scheduling latencies of > 210ms. That is a lot. That is really really really a lot." "Fedora-kernels that easily give latencies of 5ms or so." "1) For fucks sakes: get your bloody kernels fixed. Enable preempt, set HZ to 1000. Get rid of low-quality drivers that block the CPU. Latencies of 210ms is *REALLY NOT NECESSARY*. 2) If you want to stick with your crap kernel, then either disable g-f entirely or adjust the #defines at the top of src/modules/alsa-sink.c and src/modules/alsa-source.c." So why do our kernel suck so bad? + #22: Antonio Cervone (capitalaslash) (2009-02-24 11:05:26) + +1 -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/305888