Ubuntu 8.04 LTS server and desktop releases [LWN.net]

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS server and desktop releases

Posted Apr 23, 2008 6:29 UTC (Wed) by joib (guest, #8541)
In reply to: Ubuntu 8.04 LTS server and desktop releases by ArbitraryConstant
Parent article: Ubuntu 8.04 LTS server and desktop releases

What's so irritating is that at least some of these are really simple and obvious fixes. The
kernel could be fixed with a 1-line change in the kernel config. PulseAudio is a good idea
IMHO, but most of the problems with it seems to be due to not shipping an out-of-the-box
config that is optimized for PA, like the "PerfectSetup" page on the PA wiki. What the heck
where they thinking?

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Ubuntu 8.04 LTS server and desktop releases

Posted Apr 23, 2008 8:47 UTC (Wed) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]

I have a written a few ALSA applications in my time. Nothing serious, though. While I hold no
love for ALSA, I also do not appreciate the pulseaudio developers' apparent attitude that
everything not using their shit is legacy. (A comment to this effect is written on the
pulseaudio bug page at launchpad.) Maybe if they win out in the game of popularity they are
right, eventually.

I configured pulseaudio for sound playback on my desktop box with SB Live! and digital audio
link. It was a painful experience. After I toggled the option on in the gnome-sound-properties
dialog (which talks about ESound), it started PA. Then I forced the default pcm & ctl to
pulseaudio through .asoundrc, but got no sound. Applications were playing happily, so I
suspected a routing mishap.

The problem here was that the default alsa sink is the analog output sink, and there is no
toggle to switch digital output on instead. Missing an option like this is probably acceptable
for software with 0.x version number, I guess. I'd hazard that pulseaudio guys would see less
migration resistance if they didn't configure "front:0" as the output device (which should be
explicitly the 2 analog sound channels of a N-channel setup) but used "hw:0" instead, because
that would work the same way as ALSA does per default.

Yet another nail in this coffin. *sigh*

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS server and desktop releases

Posted Apr 23, 2008 17:31 UTC (Wed) by felixrabe (subscriber, #50514) [Link]

> Yet another nail in this coffin. *sigh*

No, opportunity for change.