What do you feel about PulseAudio?

**toupeiro** · May 1st, 2008

I disagree. It means longer supported. Generally the two go hand in hand in almost every other facet of software releases you look at. If LTS is no more stable than the 6 month "latest" image, why even maintain an LTS. If you look at ubuntu's main site as we speak you will see various nice little advertisement graphics, one in which the very first slogan says "Built for Stability!" How are users supposed to interpret that if the community doesn't back that idea?

from tbroderick:

But LTS doesn't mean more stable.

**twright** · May 1st, 2008

no business would deploy this soon after a release, they will deploy in a few months when (i hope) this bug will be fixed. i think if you do a fresh install now you will not experience the problem.

gutsy had some terrible problems as ATI did not support SLUB but now they have fixed it it means memory allocation is 2x as fast and my suspend is finally reliable. and compiz was initially poorly supported and broke stuff.

as long as it is patched promptly there is no problem and we get our cool new sound backend. the bug is tiny but it is in flash, one of the most used applications. It is both adobes fault and adobe's responsability (that doesn't stop us from working arround it).

hardy only has one major bug for me (which seems to be fixed now), that makes it the best release i have seen so far, i have been dreaming of having stable suspend and hibernate since fiesty

Originally Posted by toupeiro

As accurate as you may be on this point, keep in mind that 8.04 is to be an LTS (in some circles this also means more stable than other releases.) A business, behind a firewall controlling their own package management will likely deploy an LTS rather than the 6-month cycle release. Now, 5 years is a long time for something to develop. I see nothing wrong with keeping pulse audio in the repos for an LTS, and keeping them updated (this would afterall, still be "including" it), but to default to it for an LTS may be a mistake IMO... RHEL is Fedora's distant equivalent of an LTS (not necessarily from a means of licensing but a means of support), and no pulseaudio is not default for it.

Its not an irreversable decision by any means, but I think its something that anyone involved with QA on a long term release should be considering. Imagine them trying to default to whatever alpha state compiz was in with 6.06 LTS just because "probably every other distro would include it". I think that mindset somewhat jeopardizes the credibility of a long term support version. I would not be of this opinion whatsoever if this was done in 8.10

anyway, just my opinion

I still think 8.04 is a great success regardless of pulseaudio.

**stoffe** · May 1st, 2008

Pulse in itself has been fantastic for me. It has worked at every turn, no problem. Two issues has come up: flash, which did work perfectly and stopped around Firefox beta 5 (first crash, then support removed), and that is completely in libflashsupport's ballpark, second audacity which is a universe app and had a 2-second workaround that was easy to find.

Right now I can't play Youtube effortlessly. That is totally worth what Pulse can bring.

And yes, people misinterpret Long Term Support for Works Perfectly Right Now. Understandable mistake, but no, all it says is: "we'll fix things for a longer time".

Have some faith, eh?

**stoffe** · May 1st, 2008

Originally Posted by twright

you need to type these line into terminal (one by one) to fix flash

Code:

wget http://pulseaudio.vdbonline.net/flashplugin-nonfree-pulse_0.1~000.tar.gz
tar xvfz flashplugin-nonfree-pulse_0.1~000.tar.gz
cd flashplugin-nonfree-pulse-0.1~000
sudo apt-get install libpulse-dev
make
sudo make install

Tried this. Just as the libflashsupport in the repos, it brings back the frequent crashes for any flash content. So that's no fix, or rather, for those lucky enough to not have crashes from libflashsupport, they might as well get it from the repos.

**twright** · May 1st, 2008

i originally posted it in the wiki for gutsy users trying pulse, didn't know it had been packaged

i love pulseaudio also but i have had to disable it due to the issues (it doesn't survive a suspend well, and now i can actually get suspend to work this is a big issue for me)

Originally Posted by stoffe

Tried this. Just as the libflashsupport in the repos, it brings back the frequent crashes for any flash content. So that's no fix, or rather, for those lucky enough to not have crashes from libflashsupport, they might as well get it from the repos.

**toni_uk** · May 6th, 2008

Lazy user here - have to say that I really can't do with Pulse as it stands. Actually, I have now decided that after days of trying to get Pulse working/switched off (failed with both) I am back on 7.10 where everything worked perfectly.

For me the 4 big changes in 8.04 were Firefox 3 (having bugs though), new Nautilus (loved it), Open Office 2.4 (2.3 works as well for home use) and Pulse (not working on either laptop or desktop). Mint by the way has got a better way of switching off Pulse one tick and back to ALSA - don't like Desktop though.

Will be waiting for the next UBUNTU release and upgrade then. Guess Pulse will have been sorted in 6 months time. Also tried Mandriva One 2008 , SUSE 11beta and both have the same problem with Pulse. UBUNTU 8.10 - I am waiting for you!

**Samhain13** · May 6th, 2008

Just installed Hardy last night and now testing these new things.
Now using PulseAudio and fortunately, I am able to play multiple steams. For example: music from RhythmBox and a movie in VLC. One thing I noticed though is, when playing music, the volume decreases when a movie is opened. But the normal volume for the music comes back when the movie is closed.

**Ozor Mox** · May 6th, 2008

Actually, I have now decided that after days of trying to get Pulse working/switched off (failed with both) I am back on 7.10 where everything worked perfectly.

You can switch your audio back to the old ALSA in System > Preferences > Sound on 8.04, no need to revert to 7.10.

**toni_uk** · May 6th, 2008

Originally Posted by Ozor Mox

You can switch your audio back to the old ALSA in System > Preferences > Sound on 8.04, no need to revert to 7.10.

Yes, tried that - changed all to ALSA. Still did not work, seems there must be a seperate problem with my audio which did not exist pre 8.04. Could not find out what it was. Seems to be with all distros with Pulse but Mint - switched Pulse off and everything worked fine there. Rather use 7.10 than Mint though. Changing distro because of one thing is a bit drastic anyway.