Emiliano Marini <emilianomarini82@???> writes:
> Word from Eric Hameleers, one of the main Slackware maintainers (AKA
> alienbob):
>
> "...you have to have PA installed because applications are now linking
>> against it. What you can still do is configure PA to be an input channel
>> for ALSA and leave ALSA to control your hardware.
>> But generally speaking I would not recommend that unless you have high
>> audio quality standards (being a musician or an audiophile) in which case
>> you should look at Jackd anyway instead of just ALSA or PA.
>> Note that PA is no longer maintained/developed by Lennart - it is more
>> stable and useful than in the past, and not the scary broken software it
>> used to be. Something that can also be said for PAM, another stumbling
>> block for slackers."
>>
>
> https://plus.google.com/u/0/+SergioHernandezA/posts/HB7QbNXrqGk

As someone who replied to that put it:

    This isn't about whether PA is stable or not (I use it for my
    USB mic and it works just fine), it's about adding a rather
    complex layer on top of already complex Linux sound system by
    default.

And "you have to have PA installed because J. Random Coder really wants
you to" ('applications are linking against it') is not a good reason for
actually doing so. Also "it's another piece of Poettering-abandonware"
is certainly not a recommendation: The guy himself really doesn't figure
here at all, no matter how hard to understand or inconvenient to admit
this may be for some people.

I don't want PulseAudio on a system used by me unless I'm convinced that
it adds something of value to me to that.