HOW TO: Remove PulseAudio and Install ESound (ALSA)

[coldReactive]

DO NOT USE THIS TUTORIAL ON X/K/ubuntu 9.10!

This is quite a simple tutorial, it only takes a few steps, and will have your sound system/manager not be listed in the processes list under top/etc. Before we begin, make sure that you BACK-UP /etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulseaudio just in case this does not work. I can't stress this enough, as I will be UNABLE to provide support for this tutorial.

Step One: Open Terminal

• Applications > Accessories > Terminal

Step Two: Run The Commands Through Terminal

• killall pulseaudio
• sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio
• sudo apt-get install esound
• sudo rm /etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulseaudio
• sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio

Step Three: Reboot The System

After rebooting, login and see if sound actually works. Depending on your Ubuntu version, the login/startup sound will not play with ESound. ESound will work for DVD Playback.

Warning: ESound will/may not show up in the sound configurations, they will display as automatic, like below.

[simplyw00x]

What exactly is the benefit of uninstalling Pulseaudio? It works fine for me, and you haven't mentioned either what benefits you think it will give or what features you will definitely lose.

[coldReactive]

What exactly is the benefit of uninstalling Pulseaudio? It works fine for me, and you haven't mentioned either what benefits you think it will give or what features you will definitely lose.

ESound doesn't take up as much processing power (if any at all) as pulseaudio does. Not to mention, it's only about 200-400 KB in size, and only one package rather than a few.

[Keranu]

I tried doing it, but I don't see Esound listed anywhere in my Sound Preferences window and PulseAudio is still listed. Here is my terminal log if it's of any help:

keranu@humphrey:~$ sudo killall pulseaudio 
[sudo] password for keranu: 
keranu@humphrey:~$ sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio 
Reading package lists... Done 
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done 
The following packages will be REMOVED: 
  pulseaudio ubuntu-desktop 
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 
After this operation, 1880kB disk space will be freed. 
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y 
(Reading database ... 157424 files and directories currently installed.) 
Removing ubuntu-desktop ... 
Removing pulseaudio ... 
 * PulseAudio configured for per-user sessions 
Processing triggers for man-db ... 
keranu@humphrey:~$ sudo apt-get install esound 
Reading package lists... Done 
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done 
The following packages will be REMOVED: 
  pulseaudio-esound-compat 
The following NEW packages will be installed: 
  esound 
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 
Need to get 0B/28.1kB of archives. 
After this operation, 90.1kB disk space will be freed. 
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y 
(Reading database ... 157334 files and directories currently installed.) 
Removing pulseaudio-esound-compat ... 
Processing triggers for man-db ... 
Selecting previously deselected package esound. 
(Reading database ... 157322 files and directories currently installed.) 
Unpacking esound (from .../esound_0.2.40-0ubuntu3_i386.deb) ... 
Processing triggers for man-db ... 
Setting up esound (0.2.40-0ubuntu3) ... 
keranu@humphrey:~$ sudo rm /etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulseaudio 
rm: cannot remove `/etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulseaudio': No such file or directory 
keranu@humphrey:~$ sudo rm /etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulseaudio.back 
keranu@humphrey:~$ sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio 
Reading package lists... Done 
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done 
Package pulseaudio is not installed, so not removed 
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 
keranu@humphrey:~$

[coldReactive]

ESound will not show itself in sound configs. It will show as automatic.

[colorprint]

Can't use keyboard volume and mute keys after this

[Katalog]

What exactly is the benefit of uninstalling Pulseaudio? It works fine for me, and you haven't mentioned either what benefits you think it will give or what features you will definitely lose.

ESound doesn't take up as much processing power (if any at all) as pulseaudio does. Not to mention, it's only about 200-400 KB in size, and only one package rather than a few.

My opinion (and that's all it is - my opinion, so keep that in mind while you read this post) is that unless you have extremely limited resources or some kind of old or incompatible hardware that your system would actually benefit from purging PulseAudio from your system, that you're probably better off learning how to set up PulseAudio correctly (which is almost as easy as geting rid of it) and becoming familiar with it, because it is not going away. This is the future my friends, and there may come a day in the not so distant future when you may not have the option, or they will at least make it more difficult, to fall back on ESound any more. Yes, Pulse uses more resources and it does take more packages, but it also supports a wider range of devices. Pulse is indeed broken and only halfway installed in Ubuntu 9.04, but it is possible to install the missing packages and get it running correctly on Hardy, Intrepid and Jaunty:

HOWTO: PulseAudio Fixes & System-Wide Equalizer Support

I too was opposed to PulseAudio in the beginning because I saw no need for yet another Linux sound architecture, but now that I have it set up and working like it's supposed to, I actually quite like it. And I'm running it on an Eee PC 1000HA netbook with a puny little 1.6GHz N270 Atom processor, and the performance hit has not been as dreadful as I expected, and will only get better as the developers continue to improve it.

Like I said, this is just my opinion. Take it for what it's worth. I'm not trying to start a debate, I just wanted to present a logical reason for adopting it rather than getting rid of it. Just my two cents on the subject, that's all.

[Temüjin]

Esound? Esound? No!
Esound is useful for those running Hardy, who want to get rid of PulseAudio and still have system/event sounds. Other than that, run as far away from esound as you can. There is a reason that it has been replaced by libcanberra.

[coldReactive]

Esound? Esound? No!
Esound is useful for those running Hardy, who want to get rid of PulseAudio and still have system/event sounds. Other than that, run as far away from esound as you can. There is a reason that it has been replaced by libcanberra.

I don't like seeing pulseaudio in any system monitoring software.

[aeon.flux]

What exactly is the benefit of uninstalling Pulseaudio? It works fine for me, and you haven't mentioned either what benefits you think it will give or what features you will definitely lose.

i've just found this thread useful, because i play "warsow" (first person shooting game) and when i listen music (in any player using pulseaudio) and playing that game, the sounds in game often stops and i there's a problem to turn off that game (i have to pres Ctrl+Alt+F4 , type killall warsow_bin) so this is very useful ))