Rajko M. pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

On Monday 23 February 2009 01:44:56 pm Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

...

Hello,

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.

I opened an enhancement request to collect votes and motivations here https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=478511

Please, keep the entry on bugzilla as clean as possible. All the discussion should be done here on the ML.

To vote, please, don't simply add a "+1", but use the blue button to cast your votes (up to five per each user) in bugzilla.

Thanks.

With kind regards, Alberto

Voted.

I had intermittent problems too that disappeared after package removal. It is nice to test new stuff, but adding too much alpha code at once is something that goes against basic troubleshooting principle to change one parameter at the time.

The only remnant is: ************* # zypper rm libpulse0

Problem: kdebase4-runtime-4.2.0-79.2.i586 requires libpulse.so.0, but this requirement cannot be provided Solution 1: Following actions will be done: do not keep kde4-kaddressbook-4.2.0-86.3.i586 installed do not keep kde4-kmail-4.2.0-86.3.i586 installed Solution 2: do not ask to delete all solvables providing libpulse0 Solution 3: Ignore some dependencies of kdebase4-runtime

Choose from above solutions by number or cancel [1/2/3/C]: c ************* I'm pretty sure I can use solution 3.

Yep, I voted for it as well. I think pulse-audio got it's name from the fact that you hear your sound in pulses instead of a steady stream. :-)) -- Ken Schneider SuSe since Version 5.2, June 1998 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Mon, 2009-02-23 at 13:51 -0800, Greg KH wrote:

Are there specific bugs concerning pulse-audio on 11.1 that are not currently fixed?

I also agree with Greg that our focus should be looking forward and try to work and fix these issues. But as a last resort, if the problems still exist, the I do think that we need to think about removing it for 11.1. -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy - openSUSE Member Public Mail: Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from the Yeaux! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Mon, 2009-02-23 at 14:59 -0800, Greg KH wrote:

11.1 shipped, how can it be removed after the fact?

LOL whoops - 11.2 I meant :-) -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy openSUSE Member http://www.twitter.com/KevinDupuy -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Hello, peter nikolic írta:

...

11.1 shipped, how can it be removed after the fact?

greg "no time machine here" k-h

Very simply by issuing updates that use packages with the silly dependencies removed so that offensive software can be FULLY removed or is that too hard Pete .

I have one little PA related rpm left on the system, and it does not seem to hurt anything if the rest of the suite is not installed: bigone111:~ # rpm -qa | grep -i pulse libpulse0-0.9.12-9.6 I did not report on bugzilla, as there were already some reports there, and also the advice on this list, that removing PA solves most sound related issues. So I removed it right after the first problem appeared, and never had a sound related problem again :-) Personally I'd give it a second chance as part of the default install, but also a knob in yast2 sound, so it could be easily disabled/removed, without using a package manager. Bye, CzP -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 05:40:13PM -0500, Greg Freemyer wrote:

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 4:51 PM, Greg KH wrote:

...

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 04:35:26PM -0500, Ken Schneider wrote:

...

Rajko M. pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

...

On Monday 23 February 2009 01:44:56 pm Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

...

Hello,

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.

I opened an enhancement request to collect votes and motivations here https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=478511

Please, keep the entry on bugzilla as clean as possible. All the discussion should be done here on the ML.

To vote, please, don't simply add a "+1", but use the blue button to cast your votes (up to five per each user) in bugzilla.

Are there specific bugs concerning pulse-audio on 11.1 that are not currently fixed?

If not, why would anyone want to remove it and go back to the broken audio systems that we used to have?

I've had my 11.1 sound go very weird. I believe it to be related to pulse audio.

Have you filed a bug?

If you follow the link from the bugzilla to: https://tango.0pointer.de/pipermail/pulseaudio-discuss/2009-February/003150....

You see a post from yesterday that says the issue is that the OpenSuse kernel:

== 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. ==

A bug would be nice to see so that we can actually work on this... Oh, and the .7-9 kernel is old, we have a new one you know, if you have any problems, you should update to it.

The post offers no solution, but simply explains why pulseaudio is not working reliably given a 210 ms scheduling latency.

Again, bug numbers...

Thus, the question seems to be is the SuSE kernel going to be tuned to work with pulseaudio's latency requirements, or does it need to be disabled by default.

Or we fix the latency issues that people have reported in bugs? Sense a theme here? :) thanks, greg k-h -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 05:51:06PM -0600, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

...

Have you filed a bug?

FYI: there are currently at least 36 bugs that are quite annoying related to PA:

https://bugzilla.novell.com/buglist.cgi?query_format=specific&order=relevance+desc&bug_status=__open__&product=openSUSE+11.1&content=pulseaudio

All of those are annoying to you? You have a lot of different hardware :) Seriously, it looks like people are working on these issues, right? What more can you ask for? And also, a mere 36 bugs seems quite low for something that people are asking us to "rip out right now!" Makes more sense for people asking it to be removed to help out in resolving these issues.

...

Oh, and the .7-9 kernel is old, we have a new one you know, if you have any problems, you should update to it.

Currently no updated kernel has been released for openSUSE 11.1. You can't expect users to try testing kernels.

We can if you are having problems and report them so we can figure out if we have solved them or not, right? thanks, greg k-h -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 06:07:29PM -0600, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

Il giorno lun, 23/02/2009 alle 15.57 -0800, Greg KH ha scritto: Of course. I think who reports a bug has all the interest in giving feedback. But assuming that everyone having issues with PA thinks to try the KOTD is a strecth ;-)

Anyone having problems should be filing a bug, not randomly ranting on irc, no matter how good it might feel, it doesn't actually cause anything to change... thanks, greg k-h -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Tuesday 24 February 2009 02:31:48 am peter nikolic wrote:

On Tuesday 24 February 2009, Greg KH wrote:

...

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 06:07:29PM -0600, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

...

Il giorno lun, 23/02/2009 alle 15.57 -0800, Greg KH ha scritto: Of course. I think who reports a bug has all the interest in giving feedback. But assuming that everyone having issues with PA thinks to try the KOTD is a strecth ;-)

Anyone having problems should be filing a bug, not randomly ranting on irc, no matter how good it might feel, it doesn't actually cause anything to change...

thanks,

greg k-h

The BIG problem with that statement is you may be ofey with the bugzilla interface ther are a lot of us that find it very poor difficult to use and generally very bad news i have tried several time to submit buggs i dont bother now simply because bugzilla is an absolute nightmare you want bugs regisered use something with a friendly user interface else you are barking down a dark hole

Pete .

I must agree that Bugzilla interface is outdated. Search needs some skills to be used effectively. Way too many fields around for average user. Communication interface is at best last century. On the other side developers insist on bugzilla as that is: - the best bug tracker available - the best way they have to justify their paid time - easy for management to track execution To improve user experience and still keep last three is a lot of work. The last improvements in bug reporting are welcome, though I have to get used to it and see how to use it without pain :-) -- Regards, Rajko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

I must agree that Bugzilla interface is outdated. Search needs some skills to be used effectively. Way too many fields around for average user. Communication interface is at best last century.

On the other side developers insist on bugzilla as that is: - the best bug tracker available - the best way they have to justify their paid time - easy for management to track execution

To improve user experience and still keep last three is a lot of work. The last improvements in bug reporting are welcome, though I have to get used to it and see how to use it without pain :-)

We are not talking about Bugzilla interface here! The topic of this thread is PulseAudio. So suggesting to improve bugzilla here is useless noise, even if the points might be valid. So please, stop this discussion. Thanks -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Rajko M. escribió:

On the other side developers insist on bugzilla as that is: - the best bug tracker available

Bugzilla is plain awful, unfortunately the sad reality is that there is no suitable opensource "enterprise" bug tracking alternative. The only thing I found worth looking for this use-case is "Jira" that is unfortunately, proprietary. -- "If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed" -George Carlin (1937-2008) Cristian Rodríguez R. Software Developer Platform/OpenSUSE - Core Services SUSE LINUX Products GmbH Research & Development http://www.opensuse.org/

Please. I won't say there's no bug in PA but your statement is, hrm, not completely true. How can you say "there are at least 36 bugs that are quite annoying" when 12 bugs in this list are NEEDINFO and when some bugs are not related to pulseaudio or are not annoying (because your query is just about bugs mentioning PA somewhere).

Now, this discussion started as a constructive proposal to disable a feature that, like it or not, is causing more problems than benefits. If you want proofs, you simply need some research on Google to find out what is the size of the problem. The same PA developers write on their website ( http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/AboutPulseAudio ) : "The PulseAudio daemon and utilities are still under heavy development. Although they are generally considered stable, they haven't seen enough testing to warrant a first completely stable release." The list of things you should do to have a perfect audio setup, which is not complete (for example the tricks suggested for some application don't work), gives an idea of how complicated it can be to live with it http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/PerfectSetup So, frankly speaking, it is hard to believe that openSUSE, with all the efforts they can put at it, can fix PulseAudio and resolve all its problems. It would be a waste of precious resources too, probably. Moreover, openSUSE is pushing PulseAudio also inside KDE, which won't integrate it anytime soon, and which plans to rely on their own stuff (See Aseigo opinion on PulseAudio in merit). At this point, if we want to weight every single word of each statement, we can do it and write a never ending thread, as it often happens here. But I think it would be better to discuss without poking each other with pre-assumed positions. On my side, it doesn't really matter if PA is there or not, as long as the system works as it should, which is not what is happening now for many. To answer Greg: it is practically impossible to expect that every user that tries the distribution and has a problem reports it on bugzilla. Many simply search for help on IRC or on forums, and if they can't fix their problem, they simply look elsewhere. It is quite dangerous to ignore their feedback however, even if not formally done on bugzilla, because it simply helps to alienate users. People in IRC and forums can give this kind of "collective feedback", which is not helpful to fix bugs, I know, but it has to be accounted for when you decide to push something inside the distribution. Regards, A. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

I don't need any proof about problems related to PA -- it has been (and is still being) extensively commented upstream but...

Well, sometime it seemed the opposite from this discussion ;-)

I personally don't care much about PA (in the same way as I don't care much about the kernel). I do think it's the right solution in the long-term, though (but as I already said, there are currently some quite important bugs there).

I agree, and you know that I like the ideas behind PA. But for two releases it caused more pain than benefits. And anyway, we are here discussing of a reversible change: PA can already be disabled in YaST, with consequences on apps, of course, but many users simply uninstalled it to get their sound to work.

Anyway, trying to be a bit more constructive. To be able to really disable PA, say, two months before the release, we need:

+ a way to monitor the issues with PA. A bugzilla query looks like the obvious candidate. => note that we can cooperate with PA upstream there by making those issues known upstream.

Looks good to me

+ determine some criteria which would help decide if it should be disabled by default. (eg: "I can't listen to my music with amarok/banshee/rhythmbox")

Right. We should also fix a sort of deadline to decide. So that if PA is acceptable and the current problems are fixed at some point in the development phase, the idea of disabling it is dropped (no idea if KDE@opensuse wants to keep it though).

+ list all the packages that hard-depends on PA and see how hard/easy it would be to make them work without PA.

Yes. This is probably necessary only for GNOME applications. KDE 4 is not going to use PA by default upstream. But we are limited to open applications. And we know some closed key application has actually problems with PA. It's annoying, but we should account for them too because users want to be able to use them without relying on too many hacks.

+ have patches ready for those, and see if upstream would accept them. => at the moment, it looks like GNOME upstream wouldn't accept such patches, fwiw.

+ people testing the distribution without PA to make sure everything is fine. => but then, we have less people testing the distribution with PA, which is also bad...

Finding people to test the distribution without PA won't be hard I think, but limiting the damage done to the one with PA will be probably harder. Regards, A. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 08:43:26PM -0600, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

To answer Greg: it is practically impossible to expect that every user that tries the distribution and has a problem reports it on bugzilla. Many simply search for help on IRC or on forums, and if they can't fix their problem, they simply look elsewhere. It is quite dangerous to ignore their feedback however, even if not formally done on bugzilla, because it simply helps to alienate users.

It is also quite dangerous to take that feedback as somehow correlating to how well pulseaudio works. Remember, you never hear from the hundreds of thousands of users where audio works for them :)

People in IRC and forums can give this kind of "collective feedback", which is not helpful to fix bugs, I know, but it has to be accounted for when you decide to push something inside the distribution.

But you are trying to push something out of the distro, with no replacement. That's not very constructive. Providing summaries of problems from these reports to bugzilla would be constructive, and allow those problems to get fixed. thanks, greg k-h -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 10:55:08PM -0600, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

...

But you are trying to push something out of the distro, with no replacement. That's not very constructive.

It's partly true. Before PulseAudio, whose functionalities are for many something of not use, we had a lot stabler audio system, especially on GNOME. At least you didn't need to restart a daemon everytime you close your browser with a flash animation to have audio controls working again, or you could keep a player open (not playing, simply open in pause) when someone called you on Skype. Currently this is not possible anymore. Skype is trying to implement PulseAudio support, but they are having problems (PA crashes).

Even if skype just writes to the "default" alsa interface it doesn't work? That would seem very strange. Especially as all new distros implement PA these days :) And again, PA works for a lot of people, myself included, so don't talk as if it is just not working at all.

...

Providing summaries of problems from these reports to bugzilla would be constructive, and allow those problems to get fixed.

Well, asking this is quite irrealistic. How could I answer to your questions about the report not having the hardware in my hand, for example? The best I can do is to report there are certain problems.

How can we trust that you are really reporting this correctly then? :)

Reproducing them and reporting bugs would require to a three level interaction (you <-> me <-> users), which is frankly not feasible. We haven't infinite time.

No we don't, which is why people treat hearsay as such :) thanks, greg k-h -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

2009/2/24 Takashi Iwai :

On non-GNOME setup (not sure about KDE4, though), the "default" is the alsa-lib dmix.  In most cases, it's exclusive with PA unless PA uses the dmix again.  Thus, skype works, but only when you don't play something via PA.

I uninstalled PA little after installing 11.1, so I can easily be wrong. But I think that, since 11.1, PA is enabled* always (on 11.0 was only enabled with Gnome). And what is worse, there isn't a QT/KDE equivalent of pavucontrol. I suppose right now Gnome uses pavucontrol like the default mixer app, true? In KDE you would use PA but have no control over it. * when I say "enabled" I mean alsa-lib pulse plugin is used by default. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

2009/2/24 Takashi Iwai :

At Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:39:01 +0100, Cristian Morales Vega wrote:

...

2009/2/24 Takashi Iwai :

...

On non-GNOME setup (not sure about KDE4, though), the "default" is the alsa-lib dmix.  In most cases, it's exclusive with PA unless PA uses the dmix again.  Thus, skype works, but only when you don't play something via PA.

I uninstalled PA little after installing 11.1, so I can easily be wrong. But I think that, since 11.1, PA is enabled* always (on 11.0 was only enabled with Gnome).

(snip)

...

* when I say "enabled" I mean alsa-lib pulse plugin is used by default.

It's not "enabled".  Installing it alone doesn't change any default behavior.  On GNOME, there is a special set up to override the default PCM with pulse plugin, so all apps are routed over PA.  Without that, you'll have to specify explicitly "pluse" PCM to use the pulse routing from alsa-lib.

Takashi

Ok, I just got home and tested in my machine and you are correct. So, just to understand this better... - Package alsa-plugins-pulse includes file /etc/asound-pulse.conf that makes pulse the default. This file is read/used... by some magic in some gnome package? It is documented somewhere? Just curiosity. - KDE4 Multimedia preferences says it uses "x-phonon" device by default (and "plughw" like fallback)... what is this magic "x-phonon" device???? - kde4-kmail and kde4-kaddressbook don't depend on pulse like was commented here. Package kdebase4-runtime depends on libpulse.so.0 (provided by packafe libpulse0), and mail and addressbook depend on runtime. That's because of /usr/lib/kde4/kded_phononserver.so... kde.org seems down right now, but from the file name and the fact that "Multimedia" preferences from KDE4 allow to select PulseAudio directly it seems that Phonon implements both an ALSA and PulseAudio backend. Since upstream decided to implement the PulseAudio backend I don't see a good cause to don't compile it. There are also other packages with the same "problem" (MPlayer to start with). Yes, they could dlopen libpulse... I'm sure upstream will like the patches. But we are talking about just 378KB... In the *worst* scenario. If Gnome has such a hard dep with PA, can't it be configured to use dmix? With this, plus making ALSA "default" the real "default", Gnome could still have his sound server and it would not interfere with other apps. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

HOWEVER: disabling it should be the last option. It shouldn't be taken as the primary option as the subject says.

Well, we all agree on this (I hope). At least on my side, I'm not trying to do it for a question of principle.

Actually the PA problems can be categorized to two regions:

1. audio quality issues 2. integration issues

About 1, it comes more or less from "glitch-free" feature of PA (ironically). These are simply bugs to be fixed, not to hide. It's unfortunate that this feature was introduced to 11.1 before maturing.

The second issue includes the third-vendor softwares like skype, and the issues about mixer applications. The mixer issues will (should) be improved in future. But the third-vendor issue isn't always easy to fix. But, we can expect that they are going to fix the codes if they see the wide deployment and the massive problem reports...

I have no idea about Adobe. Skype is actively working on it, it seems. They have an experimental PA support which should be part of the next release, but what they said on their website is that it has stability problems (strange!) ;-) I would add some other stuff actually, if you didn't include them in the "mixer problems". Which are the crashes of the daemon that leave you without controls. On my side they are pretty frequent, and in theory a patch was already applied for that in 11.0. Regards, A. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Tuesday 24 February 2009 08:20:27 am Greg Freemyer wrote:

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 9:11 AM, Alberto Passalacqua

wrote:

...

...

HOWEVER: disabling it should be the last option.  It shouldn't be taken as the primary option as the subject says.

Well, we all agree on this (I hope). At least on my side, I'm not trying to do it for a question of principle.

...

Actually the PA problems can be categorized to two regions:

1. audio quality issues 2. integration issues

About 1, it comes more or less from "glitch-free" feature of PA (ironically).  These are simply bugs to be fixed, not to hide. It's unfortunate that this feature was introduced to 11.1 before maturing.

The second issue includes the third-vendor softwares like skype, and the issues about mixer applications.  The mixer issues will (should) be improved in future.  But the third-vendor issue isn't always easy to fix.  But, we can expect that they are going to fix the codes if they see the wide deployment and the massive problem reports...

I have no idea about Adobe. Skype is actively working on it, it seems. They have an experimental PA support which should be part of the next release, but what they said on their website is that it has stability problems (strange!) ;-)

I would add some other stuff actually, if you didn't include them in the "mixer problems". Which are the crashes of the daemon that leave you without controls. On my side they are pretty frequent, and in theory a patch was already applied for that in 11.0.

Regards, A.

It seems like sound in general is a mess with linux. I know my personal experience with it over the last 18 months has been poor.

I actually was pretty happy with it for11.1 out of the box, but for me with the KDE 4.2 factory and the most recent you updates, if has been highly unstable. I had pulse audio enabled until a few days ago when it just got to be too much of a hassle.

For me it was problem with KDE3, as still use it most of the time.

The trouble seems to be the variety of hardware / software people are using

That is the problem anywhere. In windows vendors provide drivers, which works fine for vendors that know how to write drivers and don't want to abuse installation to push junk utilities on users. When that is not the case you get broken windows installation and pile of junk that runs without your knowledge all the time. Linux has problem that too many drivers are written by people that are not insiders ie. can't access confidential infomation, spend time guessing how hardware works, instead of developing actual driver.

plus the lack of feedback to the factory team to make decisions with.

The feedback exist, though, majority outside bugzilla. The problem is that bugzilla user and communication interface are outdated, plus there is problem that bugzilla is not configuration support, so questions of that kind are not accepted, and people should have some skills in order to provide data for developers. Who doesn't use command line can't help much.

It seems like what is needed is way to automatically gather hardware / software info, plus ask the user about their experience with sound.

Can smolt be leveraged to do something like that?

Good idea. Though, user interface needs some work too. Currently you can automatically report hardware info, but you need password for online edit. Online edit allows you to change marks for each reported piece of hardware, and add comments in the wiki. For wiki you need login. Workflow is relative simple if user is willing to spend time learning it, but it is still good only for old type of Linux users. The whole workflow from encountering the bug to solution is separated in a few pieces that users must learn that they exist and how to use, before they can get what they need, ie. bug solution. Basically none of options is really helpful for todays average users. Without reliance on engineering software solution to understand users (human input), which with best effort will not happen any soon, problem is how to use best properties of communication media as forums, USENET, IRC, and mail, hardware reporting tools as smolt, bug tracking software and skilled volunteers as mediators. -- Regards, Rajko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Takashi Iwai pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

At Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:41:11 -0800, Greg KH wrote:

...

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 10:55:08PM -0600, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

...

...

But you are trying to push something out of the distro, with no replacement. That's not very constructive. It's partly true. Before PulseAudio, whose functionalities are for many something of not use, we had a lot stabler audio system, especially on GNOME. At least you didn't need to restart a daemon everytime you close your browser with a flash animation to have audio controls working again, or you could keep a player open (not playing, simply open in pause) when someone called you on Skype. Currently this is not possible anymore. Skype is trying to implement PulseAudio support, but they are having problems (PA crashes). Even if skype just writes to the "default" alsa interface it doesn't work? That would seem very strange. Especially as all new distros implement PA these days :)

How "default" PCM behaves is dependent upon the setup. On GNOME, the default is routed always over PA through alsa-lib pulse plugin. And, skype is known to be problematic with the pulse alsa-lib plugin. Since skype doesn't talk with PA directly, its communication route is:

skype <-> alsa-lib (pulse plugin) <-> PA <-> alsa-lib (hw) <-> kernel

You see how fragile it could be.

On non-GNOME setup (not sure about KDE4, though), the "default" is the alsa-lib dmix. In most cases, it's exclusive with PA unless PA uses the dmix again. Thus, skype works, but only when you don't play something via PA.

The problem of flash-player is a mixture of such scenarios. When libflashsupport package is installed (it is as default), the flash player tries to detect what backend to use. It prefers PA if running, otherwise takes alsa "default". Again, depending on the setup, the routing might be complicated or mis-detected.

So, when PA is disabled, indeed the system shall work well like before. That's why the thread started. And, I'm also for an *option* to disable PA.

HOWEVER: disabling it should be the last option. It shouldn't be taken as the primary option as the subject says.

Actually the PA problems can be categorized to two regions:

1. audio quality issues 2. integration issues

About 1, it comes more or less from "glitch-free" feature of PA (ironically). These are simply bugs to be fixed, not to hide. It's unfortunate that this feature was introduced to 11.1 before maturing.

Exactly the point here! openSUSE _seems_ to be going in that direction a lot lately, integrating features before they are stable enough. For people new to openSUSE all they experience is bad taste for linux and go back to windows. -- Ken Schneider SuSe since Version 5.2, June 1998 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 08:04:12AM -0600, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

...

Even if skype just writes to the "default" alsa interface it doesn't work? That would seem very strange. Especially as all new distros implement PA these days :)

And again, PA works for a lot of people, myself included, so don't talk as if it is just not working at all.

Does skype work out of the box for you?

I don't use skype.

Doesn't your audio system get stuck when you use flash?

Nope, works fine. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Hm, let me make sure I understand this.

You ask for an important change, want it to be motivated by *voting* (instead of an educated decision on sound technical base and estimation of impact) -- and you feel you're not able to provide summaries of existing problems?

Note, Greg didn't ask you to reproduce the existing bugs, he merely suggested that you have a look onto the tracked issues in order to help with getting an overview, which is a very useful suggestion in my mind, because it is something that everybody can help with; it doesn't require programming skills. It would be very constructive, IMO, and a very valuable form of contribution.

Probably you don't know that this is going on on bugzilla, as suggested by Takashi. I'm collecting the information on how to eventually proceed, and I'll open two trackers, one for GNOME and one for KDE, soon. A summary of a problem is simply its description: it might be the title of bugreport. I can surely do that. The question is: would it be of any use to fix problems? In my answer I meant that that summary would be of very limited use to fix those problems, which is what Greg wants to try to do. I can write that "User X has the problem Y on hardware Z", but if I don't have the hardware Z and user X doesn't provide feedback himself, you have no real advantage from the summary. It might help to decide what to do though, that's granted. Regards, A. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

peter nikolic wrote: ...

Why are you people having such a hard time with a very simple task remove the default from PulseAudio and make it by user choice alsa has functioned without problems for a good while you are try once again FORCE the users to put up with something that should still be VERY BETA .

I share your annoyance with the broken PA in 11.1 but the point here - on the factory list - is that we can, should and indeed must fix it for 11.2. That will only happen with it being used and tested. A fully functional PA will be well worth some effort. -- Cheers Richard (MQ) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Tuesday 24 February 2009, Greg KH wrote:

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 08:43:26PM -0600, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

...

To answer Greg: it is practically impossible to expect that every user that tries the distribution and has a problem reports it on bugzilla. Many simply search for help on IRC or on forums, and if they can't fix their problem, they simply look elsewhere. It is quite dangerous to ignore their feedback however, even if not formally done on bugzilla, because it simply helps to alienate users.

It is also quite dangerous to take that feedback as somehow correlating to how well pulseaudio works. Remember, you never hear from the hundreds of thousands of users where audio works for them :)

very doubtfull

...

People in IRC and forums can give this kind of "collective feedback", which is not helpful to fix bugs, I know, but it has to be accounted for when you decide to push something inside the distribution.

But you are trying to push something out of the distro, with no replacement. That's not very constructive. Providing summaries of problems from these reports to bugzilla would be constructive, and allow those problems to get fixed.

thanks,

greg k-h

you want to use it then use it but dont try to foce something that is broken and borked on those of us that dont want it give us the choice build the packages that allow us to choose PA or not to PA very simple i do not know just why you are making such a big deal of it , PA is a bolt on goodie or baddie whichever way you look at it so make it chooseable and do NOT build packages that force dependances on other borked packages . If the GTk clan want PA there welcome but dont force it on us KDE does NOT need it so should not be forced to use it I do not normally get involved in these debates but this is one where you need to be forced to see sense by fair means or foul Pete . Pete -- Opensuse 10.3 x86_64 (Linux is like a wigwam no Gates, no Windows, and an Apache inside.) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Greg KH pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 04:35:26PM -0500, Ken Schneider wrote:

...

Rajko M. pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

...

On Monday 23 February 2009 01:44:56 pm Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

...

Hello,

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.

I opened an enhancement request to collect votes and motivations here https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=478511

Please, keep the entry on bugzilla as clean as possible. All the discussion should be done here on the ML.

To vote, please, don't simply add a "+1", but use the blue button to cast your votes (up to five per each user) in bugzilla.

Are there specific bugs concerning pulse-audio on 11.1 that are not currently fixed?

If not, why would anyone want to remove it and go back to the broken audio systems that we used to have?

Resistance to change from Linux users is kind of funny some times if you think about it...

thanks,

greg k-h

So, rather then go back to a broken audio system that actually worked we should use a new audio system that doesn't work. On my system and many others the sound does not come out in a steady stream but comes out in pulses. This has been reported many times. Thanks, but no thanks. openSUSE 11.1, two different systems one 32 bit and one 64 bit. -- Ken Schneider SuSe since Version 5.2, June 1998 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Monday 23 February 2009, Greg KH wrote:

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 05:49:06PM -0500, Ken Schneider wrote:

...

Greg KH pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

...

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 04:35:26PM -0500, Ken Schneider wrote:

...

Rajko M. pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

...

On Monday 23 February 2009 01:44:56 pm Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

...

Hello,

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.

I opened an enhancement request to collect votes and motivations here https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=478511

Please, keep the entry on bugzilla as clean as possible. All the discussion should be done here on the ML.

To vote, please, don't simply add a "+1", but use the blue button to cast your votes (up to five per each user) in bugzilla.

Are there specific bugs concerning pulse-audio on 11.1 that are not currently fixed?

If not, why would anyone want to remove it and go back to the broken audio systems that we used to have?

Resistance to change from Linux users is kind of funny some times if you think about it...

thanks,

greg k-h

So, rather then go back to a broken audio system that actually worked we

If it's broke, why would we go back to it?

...

should use a new audio system that doesn't work. On my system and many others the sound does not come out in a steady stream but comes out in pulses. This has been reported many times. Thanks, but no thanks.

What bug numbers has this been reported in?

...

openSUSE 11.1, two different systems one 32 bit and one 64 bit.

Bug numbers?

thanks,

greg "broken record" k-h

...

-- Ken Schneider SuSe since Version 5.2, June 1998 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

will ya get of that darn dumb bugzilla high horse for once it is a piece of crap . bugs are not entered for the simple reason it sucks Pete . -- Opensuse 10.3 x86_64 (Linux is like a wigwam no Gates, no Windows, and an Apache inside.) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Tuesday 24 February 2009, Peter Czanik wrote:

Hello,

peter nikolic írta:

...

will ya get of that darn dumb bugzilla high horse for once it is a piece of crap .

bugs are not entered for the simple reason it sucks

I remember the days, when bugzilla did not exist, only the suse-beta-e, which was the best mailing list I ever participated. Still, bugzilla made it a lot more productive. So, even if bugzilla lacks nice interface (which is not true any more), it is the only good bug tracker around. And the only way to keep track the life (and hopefully the death) of bugs. So you better get used to it :-) Bye, CzP

why am i getting PM's as well as list ? as to the better get used to not a hope in hell :-) .. Pete . -- Opensuse 10.3 x86_64 (Linux is like a wigwam no Gates, no Windows, and an Apache inside.) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

At Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:45:24 -0500, JP Rosevear wrote:

On Mon, 2009-02-23 at 13:51 -0800, Greg KH wrote:

...

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 04:35:26PM -0500, Ken Schneider wrote:

...

Rajko M. pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

...

On Monday 23 February 2009 01:44:56 pm Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

...

Hello,

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.

I opened an enhancement request to collect votes and motivations here https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=478511

Please, keep the entry on bugzilla as clean as possible. All the discussion should be done here on the ML.

To vote, please, don't simply add a "+1", but use the blue button to cast your votes (up to five per each user) in bugzilla.

Are there specific bugs concerning pulse-audio on 11.1 that are not currently fixed?

The biggest issue I'm aware of remaining in the 0.9.14 series are some problems with the glitch-free code and certain alsa drivers. Its possible we should turn off the glitch-free code in the near term, but time will tell.

Right, the g-f feature is still highly experimental, IMO. Turning it off would be a wise option for stability rather than the slight amount of power-saving. There are of course some driver issues, and these must be fixed. But, this is no excuse that PA can't work _stably_ like other audio systems. The problems annoying most people are not about feature richness but about stability, indeed. Takashi -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, 2009-02-24 at 00:13 -0600, Rajko M. wrote:

On Monday 23 February 2009 03:51:54 pm Greg KH wrote: ...

...

Are there specific bugs concerning pulse-audio on 11.1 that are not currently fixed?

Yes. Why kde4-kaddressbook and kde4-kmail depend on pulseaudio. Can't find bug report.

...

If not, why would anyone want to remove it and go back to the broken audio systems that we used to have?

In what way broken? Any discussions, links, anything? Sometimes your comments offer too little besides "believe me".

Are you for real? What, if anything, did you offer to this discussion? See your own answer above. Seriosuly, Magnus -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Il giorno mar, 24/02/2009 alle 02.04 -0600, Rajko M. ha scritto:

On Tuesday 24 February 2009 12:28:37 am Magnus Boman wrote:

...

On Tue, 2009-02-24 at 00:13 -0600, Rajko M. wrote:

...

On Monday 23 February 2009 03:51:54 pm Greg KH wrote: ...

...

Are there specific bugs concerning pulse-audio on 11.1 that are not currently fixed?

Yes. Why kde4-kaddressbook and kde4-kmail depend on pulseaudio. Can't find bug report.

...

If not, why would anyone want to remove it and go back to the broken audio systems that we used to have?

In what way broken? Any discussions, links, anything? Sometimes your comments offer too little besides "believe me".

Are you for real? What, if anything, did you offer to this discussion? See your own answer above.

Seriosuly, Magnus

More than you with above comment.

On the other hand, why should I? What incentive I have to be serious,

Well, at least you should try to be because there is someone interested in fixing, one way or the other, these issues. It is not a battle between PA lovers and haters, or at least it should not be. We want a solution that works for most, possibly without creating a mountain of useless work for those who work on it.

if I see that someone made decision and that is all that matters. I can't recall discussion about it.

Why do you think we are discussing? Because the interested people at Novell is open to our feedback and is actually trying to find a working solution, which is not necessarily disable PA. If we can offer it without the issues it brings now, well, that's OK. It is quite useless at this point to say that it was rushed in 11.0 and 11.1: it is a fact. But we need to look forward at 11.2, and it is what we are trying to do!

Should I mention Beagle, as another thing that is installed by default, even on KDE system that has its own search strigi.

No please. We are already going far off-topic, also thanks to certain answers fed by some Novell people, which surely didn't help much, aimed to cause reactions more than to have feedback. So don't add to it.

Look better on: http://en.opensuse.org/statistics

I don't see rising numbers, and your job depends on those numbers, not mine.

Did you need to say this, especially in this period? Bah! Bye, A. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Il giorno mar, 24/02/2009 alle 17.28 +1100, Magnus Boman ha scritto:

On Tue, 2009-02-24 at 00:13 -0600, Rajko M. wrote:

...

On Monday 23 February 2009 03:51:54 pm Greg KH wrote: ...

...

Are there specific bugs concerning pulse-audio on 11.1 that are not currently fixed?

Yes. Why kde4-kaddressbook and kde4-kmail depend on pulseaudio. Can't find bug report.

...

If not, why would anyone want to remove it and go back to the broken audio systems that we used to have?

In what way broken? Any discussions, links, anything? Sometimes your comments offer too little besides "believe me".

Are you for real? What, if anything, did you offer to this discussion? See your own answer above.

Seriosuly, Magnus

Sigh. Now you see why I didn't open a discussion here, even if bugzilla was probably the wrong place? :-( I actually didn't know we could use FATE for that... Regards, A. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 04:35:26PM -0500, Ken Schneider wrote: <snip> Oh, and setting the reply-to to opensuse@opensuse.de is not very nice Ken. You should know better. bleah. greg k-h -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Monday February 23 2009, Greg KH wrote:

...

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 04:35:26PM -0500, Ken Schneider wrote:

<snip>

Oh, and setting the reply-to to opensuse@opensuse.de is not very nice Ken. You should know better.

Ken's message bore the reply-to value "opensuse@opensuse.org" as received by me: I think the point Greg KH was making is that this discussion should take place on

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 22:10, Randall R Schulz wrote: the factory list as the OP, Alberto Passalacqua requested. Including the general list would be a no-no in this case. ne... -- Registered Linux User # 125653 (http://counter.li.org) Now accepting personal mail for GMail invites. Bill Watterson - "There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do." -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Greg KH pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 04:35:26PM -0500, Ken Schneider wrote:

<snip>

Oh, and setting the reply-to to opensuse@opensuse.de is not very nice Ken. You should know better.

bleah.

greg k-h

Sorry, I missed changing it. -- Ken Schneider SuSe since Version 5.2, June 1998 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Hi, On Mon, 23 Feb 2009, Ken Schneider wrote:

Ken Schneider pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

...

Greg KH pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

...

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 04:35:26PM -0500, Ken Schneider wrote:

...

...

Oh, and setting the reply-to to opensuse@opensuse.de is not very nice Ken. You should know better.

bleah.

greg k-h

Sorry, I missed changing it.

And I'll keep setting it to (hopefully) the factory list until people learn and understand that the OP does not need TWO copies sent back. Keep the replies _ONLY_ to the list.

Seconded. It would be easy for the list moderator to clear it up once-forever, but Henne Vogelsang is the moderator, I guess... Viele Grüße Eberhard Mönkeberg (emoenke@gwdg.de, em@kki.org) -- Eberhard Mönkeberg Arbeitsgruppe IT-Infrastruktur E-Mail: emoenke@gwdg.de Tel.: +49 (0)551 201-1551 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen (GWDG) Am Fassberg 11, 37077 Göttingen URL: http://www.gwdg.de E-Mail: gwdg@gwdg.de Tel.: +49 (0)551 201-1510 Fax: +49 (0)551 201-2150 Geschäftsführer: Prof. Dr. Bernhard Neumair Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender: Dipl.-Kfm. Markus Hoppe Sitz der Gesellschaft: Göttingen Registergericht: Göttingen Handelsregister-Nr. B 598 -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi, On Mon, 23 Feb 2009, Ken Schneider - openSUSE wrote:

Eberhard Moenkeberg pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

...

On Mon, 23 Feb 2009, Ken Schneider wrote:

...

Ken Schneider pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

...

...

...

And I'll keep setting it to (hopefully) the factory list until people learn and understand that the OP does not need TWO copies sent back. Keep the replies _ONLY_ to the list.

Seconded. It would be easy for the list moderator to clear it up once-forever, but Henne Vogelsang is the moderator, I guess...

Well, actually Henne has it set correct. It is the many users that seem to be too lazy to reply correctly on "openSUSE" lists. Enough said, back to factory.

He is able to set it up so that private replies get avoided, but he does not do it. Viele Grüße Eberhard Mönkeberg (emoenke@gwdg.de, em@kki.org)

(I'm not saying we should blindly stay with PA, but I find it a bit weird to disable something at the beginning of a cycle, while we're getting new upstream versions with fixes)

Right. But if we ask this at the end, what would you answer? That we are too late to ask for such a change, which, as you said, GNOME depends on quite a lot. So, I think this is the right time to think to it and discuss about it. Regards, Alberto -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Oh, I'm happy to keep an option on disabling it at the end. I just don't see how disabling it now will help us move forward...

The request/proposal was done now exactly to have the time to think at it without the hurry of taking a decision one month before the release. I didn't write anywhere it has to be disabled now. But it is a lot better to think at it from now on, keeping that possibility open and be prepared for it. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

At Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:53:55 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote:

Le lundi 23 février 2009, à 17:11 -0600, Alberto Passalacqua a écrit :

...

...

(I'm not saying we should blindly stay with PA, but I find it a bit weird to disable something at the beginning of a cycle, while we're getting new upstream versions with fixes)

Right. But if we ask this at the end, what would you answer? That we are too late to ask for such a change, which, as you said, GNOME depends on quite a lot. So, I think this is the right time to think to it and discuss about it.

Oh, I'm happy to keep an option on disabling it at the end. I just don't see how disabling it now will help us move forward...

An option to disable PA and switch to other backend has definitely some merits, especially from the testing and debugging POV. When you have some audio problems, you can test by switching the underlying subsystem to check where the problem is in. (If the bugzilla was about "providing an option to disable PA", I had no objection. But, "disabling PA by default" is a completely different thing...) Takashi -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

At Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:32:02 -0500, JP Rosevear wrote:

On Tue, 2009-02-24 at 09:53 +0100, Takashi Iwai wrote:

...

At Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:53:55 +0100, Vincent Untz wrote:

...

Le lundi 23 février 2009, à 17:11 -0600, Alberto Passalacqua a écrit :

...

...

(I'm not saying we should blindly stay with PA, but I find it a bit weird to disable something at the beginning of a cycle, while we're getting new upstream versions with fixes)

Right. But if we ask this at the end, what would you answer? That we are too late to ask for such a change, which, as you said, GNOME depends on quite a lot. So, I think this is the right time to think to it and discuss about it.

Oh, I'm happy to keep an option on disabling it at the end. I just don't see how disabling it now will help us move forward...

An option to disable PA and switch to other backend has definitely some merits, especially from the testing and debugging POV. When you have some audio problems, you can test by switching the underlying subsystem to check where the problem is in.

This is already available in yast2 sound - under "_Other" - "PulseAudio _Configuration"

But does this really work for GNOME? I.e. after setting it in YaST, GNOME won't use PA any more? Takashi -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

At Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:54:16 +0100, Ladislav Slezak wrote:

Takashi Iwai wrote:

...

JP Rosevear wrote:

...

...

This is already available in yast2 sound - under "_Other" - "PulseAudio _Configuration"

But does this really work for GNOME? I.e. after setting it in YaST, GNOME won't use PA any more?

Yast is just a fronted to 'setup-pulseaudio' script in this case.

# setup-pulseaudio --disable Disabling PulseAudio for ALSA... Disabling PulseAudio for libao... Disabling PulseAudio for mplayer... Disabling PulseAudio for openal...

Disabling PulseAudio for OSS... Disabling PulseAudio for SDL... SDL_AUDIODRIVER=pulse Disabling PulseAudio for Timidity... Disabling PulseAudio for Xine...

I don't use Gnome, so I cannot say if it switches off PA there, but the above applications should be affected.

Ah thanks, this enlightens me. (BTW you should use grep -q option there.) I'm wondering how the Phonon setup for KDE4 is influenced by that. Basically KDE4 has no strong coupling with PA. Using PA there could be rather a side-effect of the desktop integration. This should be tracked via bugzilla. I guess GNOME setup won't be changed by this script. For example, ALSA_CONFIG_PATH is always set in /usr/bin/gnome (if alsa-plugins-pulse is installed). thanks, Takashi -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

Le mardi 24 février 2009, à 13:10 +1000, Eric Springer a écrit :

(Although, let's remove beagle (and replace with tracker?) and remove Monsoon (and replace with transmission). Now that would be productive -- as it might actually happen :D)

Don't know about beagle. For monsoon vs transmission, this has been discussed: http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-gnome/2008-03/msg00104.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-gnome/2008-04/msg00063.html A change is certainly possible if there's some rationale for it. Join opensuse-gnome to discuss this :-) (I do think transmission is a better solution, at least UI-wise, fwiw) Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, 2009-02-24 at 13:10 +1000, Eric Springer wrote:

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 5:44 AM, Alberto Passalacqua wrote:

...

Hello,

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.

I opened an enhancement request to collect votes and motivations here https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=478511

Please, keep the entry on bugzilla as clean as possible. All the discussion should be done here on the ML.

To vote, please, don't simply add a "+1", but use the blue button to cast your votes (up to five per each user) in bugzilla.

Thanks.

With kind regards, Alberto

While I agree with you, it's a lost battle. So let's work on improving pulse, as it's here to stay.

(Although, let's remove beagle (and replace with tracker?) and remove Monsoon (and replace with transmission). Now that would be productive -- as it might actually happen :D)

Serirously, we're here to discuss PA. Can you please stay on topic or start a different ML thread. Sheep shots like that is not going anywhere you know. Thanks, Magnus -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

On Tuesday 24 February 2009 08:13:27 Benji Weber wrote:

* It breaks hardware mixing

Without pulseaudio I can play music in a music player, and run games that output to alsa directly. I hear both the music and the audio from the game. With pulseaudio this doesn't work, I hear only the output from the music player. It locks the sound device. Sure you could say the non-free unmaintained software should be rewritten to use PA but that's not going to happen.

It does not break hardware mixing - if you had hardware mixing, you would not notice any problems. It avoids using the alsa lib software mixing (dmix), which is a good thing in general, as this would introduce additional latency. PA is much more capable as dmix is. dmix uses a fixed buffer size, meaning constant latency, whereas PAs "buffer rewriting"/glitch-free gives you short latency when you need it combined with low overhead for simple playback of stuff like mp3s or video.

* Poor Audio Quality

With pulseaudio audio music like it is played through excessively cheap headphones regardless of the player. I have no idea what causes this but disabling pulseaudio fixes it.

Most probably a saturation problem. Try lowering mixer volumes. Should not needed by default, so this may be a bug, but not a general problem of PA.

[...]

* It provides me with zero benefit

Other than networked sound. Who wants to use this, seriously?

LTSP uses it. Despite that, it integrates with Bluetooth headsets, offers low latency and low overhead at the same time, provides independent volume controls for applications and allows for moving streams from one device to another. Any remaining problems should just be fixed. It is not impossible, but may be hard - but there a still ~6 months left for 11.2. Stefan -- Stefan Brüns / Bergstraße 21 / 52062 Aachen phone: +49 241 53809034 mobile: +49 151 50412019 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org

2009/2/24 Stefan Bruens :

It does not break hardware mixing - if you had hardware mixing, you would not notice any problems. It avoids using the alsa lib software mixing (dmix), which is a good thing in general, as this would introduce additional latency. PA is much more capable as dmix is. dmix uses a fixed buffer size, meaning constant latency, whereas PAs "buffer rewriting"/glitch-free gives you short latency when you need it combined with low overhead for simple playback of stuff like mp3s or video.

Nope it works too without dmix, and before dmix was available. It's just pulseaudio that breaks it. -- Benjamin Weber -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org