Pulseaudio is Destroying Linux Audio

[rookcifer]

Why do some of the major Linux distros feel it is imperative that they destroy Linux audio by forcing the notoriously buggy Pulseaudio down our throats? I left Fedora because Pulseaudio is giving me kernel failures on Fedora 11 (it's still in Beta but it is being released in like a week, so this is unacceptable). And when I tried to remove Pulseaudio, I found out that I have to remove the entire desktop. Pulseaudio has itself so deeply entrenched into Fedora that its just unbelievably sad. If anyone thinks I am exaggerating (and if you have a Soundblaster Live! soundcard), then I suggest you download Fedora 11 Preview and see for yourself. It is unusable due to kernel failures. And a SB Live! is NOT a rare soundcard at all. A little old, yes, but far from rare. One person on the Fedora help forums actually told me to go buy a new soundcard!

Now, I don't mean to turn this into a Fedora bashing session, and I realize this isn't Ubuntu's problem, but it's just a matter of time before a similar pulseaudio bug hits Ubuntu and causes all hell to break loose over here. After all, Ubuntu is, like Fedora, forcing Pulseaudio on its users.

For instance, I installed Jaunty and then tried to remove Pulseaudio. Well, it wanted to take "ubuntu-desktop" with it. I allowed it to remove it and I still have a working desktop (luckily), but it can't be good to have to remove "ubuntu-desktop" nor should it be necessary.

The Pulseaudio devs must be good salesmen because they sure have sold Fedora and Ubuntu a bridge to nowhere. Pulseaudio is good for absolutely nothing other than streaming audio to different devices or over a network, etc. It is NOT needed for at least 90% of users with one machine and one soundcard. So, I must ask, why is it the default when ALSA has worked so well for years? The PA devs argue that ALSA is too complicated, but they fail to recognize that ALSA is no more complicated than installing sound drivers and using the mixer in Windows! Essentially what they are saying is that Linux users are dumber than ******* users.

Bottom line: Pulseaudio is not ready for prime time and we all are being used as guinea pigs for debugging it (a dev on Fedora forums admitted this).

I asked the following questions on another Linux distro forum (and did not receive one positive review of Pulseaudio from a single person), so I will ask here as well:

How has Pulseaudio enhanced your Linux audio experience? Has it made your life easier than ALSA? Is the sound quality better than with ALSA? Do you have more options in pulseaudio than you did with ALSA mixer? Do you like not being able to adjust bass/treble, etc. with Pulseaudio?

[3rdalbum]

If you argue that Pulseaudio is unnecessary for 90% of users, then I'm going to argue that Pulseaudio is trouble-free for 90% of users. It's certainly trouble-free for me.

ALSA is notoriously difficult to program with directly. With ALSA there is no easy way to control the volume of an individual program; Pulseaudio makes this easy and it's a very useful feature that I use every week.

I was never able to control bass or treble with ALSA; I didn't know that anyone could. Pulseaudio is a userspace daemon that works on top of ALSA, so any controls that ALSA provides should still be able to be used.

One of the big aims of Pulseaudio was to stop the current situation with different sound systems locking the audio output device. I haven't observed this "locking" happening since Ubuntu 8.04, so I'm happy.

I just literally don't see any problems. It's safe to remove the "ubuntu-desktop" package, by the way; but it's also unnecessary to remove the pulseaudio package even in Fedora. You can just stop PA from loading in the first place.

[mikewhatever]

I think it is the matter of moving forward and being innovative. New technologies are cool, they draw attention, pulseaudio sound server, wow, awesome. A distro that doesn't include pulseaudio would probably be labeled conservative, old, stagnated. I really hope it does work for most users, however, it strikes me as odd that the GUI for utilizing all of its great features isn't installed by default. How exactly am I supposed to know that the pavucontrol package will let me control volume per application?
That said, I am not against PA. It's very simple to remove it, and right after, everything works as expected.

[HappyFeet]

I also am experiencing no issues with pulse audio.

[Kareeser]

ubuntu-desktop is a meta package. You can remove it, mangle it, vandalize it to echo "rookcifer rulez!", and it will wouldn't do anything.

[Seq]

I also have no problems with Pulse Audio on a laptop with Intel HDA and a desktop with Asus Xonar DX. Furthermore, software like earcandy is rather cool, and not possible without a system like pulseaudio. Also note that newer versions of gnome (2.6.27 branch, for example) will have better volume control for pulse. Everything takes time.

As for feeling like a guinea pig -- welcome to Desktop Linux. The old mantra rings true: release early, release often. If you only wish to use things that have been previously stablized, there is always RHEL and Debian Stable.

Also note that removing ubuntu-desktop may cause upgrade problems in the future.

[zenithdave]

I would have agreed with you a year ago when i started tinkering with Ubuntu however it has improved lots since then.

I don't know if it's the same now but i just used to go to synaptic and uninstall the Pulseaudio server on every install i did until Jaunty.

It still prefers my on board realtek audio card to my Midiman delta

[urosg3]

Pulseaudio is huge step forward IMHO. Sound its just better with pulse...

Btw sorry for Fedora, its great distro.

[cb951303]

8.10 and 9.04 are the only ubuntu releases I could listen to music while a flash movie was open in firefox. I have fewer problems with pulseaudio than I had with esound/alsa

[Zaiden]

Ever since I started using Ubuntu (Around 8.10), Pulseaudio has always caused a delay in sound for everything, and it still has this issue in 9.04(and still no fix/workaround). Making it an optional install would be great instead of making it default. Otherwise, this is the only issue that keeps me from switching to Ubuntu.