:: Re: [DNG] FF pulseaudio hard depend…
Top Page
Delete this message
Reply to this message
Author: Alessandro Selli
Date:  
To: dng
Subject: Re: [DNG] FF pulseaudio hard dependency is here
Il 08/03/2017 18:33, golinux@??? ha scritto:
> This is a follow up to this old thread:
> https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20161002.124357.7c39d049.en.html
>
> According to this post on FDN -
> http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=638632#p638632 - the hard
> pulseaudio requirement has now been implemented:
>
> "From Firefox 52 onwards, pulseaudio is a hard requirement for sound
> on linux. Alsa is unsupported and alsa code will be removed in Firefox
> 54." (from - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.c ... 47056#c178 )
>
> So heads up that Devuan might need recompile FF for alsa if Debian
> does not. Of course, the blowback for going down this road could yet
> change Mozilla's mind. Yeah, right . . .
>
> Or maybe another viable alternative will miraculously appear . . .
>
> golinux


I was about to write a similar message, as I just found out about the
new "feature" the hard way.
In the short term I think I'm going to switch to midori.

I read about this change in several places, Arch and Gentoo have builds
that re-enable Alsa. Over and over again I read in
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1247056 that people who
refuse to install Pulse Audio (PA) are "irrational" and/or "stubborn".
Yet, the only reason they offer to only support PA in spite of the fact
that PA is *not* required to have audio in Linux, is just that it makes
they work easier:

«Make Pulse Audio a hard dependency on Linux so that we reduce the
problems and maintenance associated with maintaining multiple audio
backends.».

I'm going to look for technical reasons because PA should not be made
the only sound backend in Linux. I remember when PA was new my reaction
was negative because it was behaving badly (made sound worse), it kept
spawning a demon that just would never go away no matter what I did
(even as root) and made alsamixer lose all but one of it's controls.
But mostly I wondered why did Linux need two sound layers (PA and the
kernel Alsa modules) to do audio.

I don't like the looks of this, I plain detest having more software to
to the same things (I did not run into issues with Alsa that prompted me
to find alternatives), I hate having to change because others decided I
must do so with no sound technical reasons. But I have no strong
technical reasons to still oppose PA in favor of Alsa. Does anyone?
Since it's going to be a fight to keep PA at bay, I think we need to
argument our decisions against PA in stronger terms than "it was
developed by Lennart Poettering", lest we sound just "irrational" and
"stubborn" people.


--
Alessandro Selli <alessandroselli@???>
Tel. 3701355486
VOIP SIP: dhatarattha@???
Chiave PGP/GPG key: B7FD89FD