LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess [LWN.net]

LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess

Posted Sep 19, 2008 9:37 UTC (Fri) by dgm (subscriber, #49227)
In reply to: LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess by nix
Parent article: LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess

> alsa with dmix obsoletes the concept of a sound server iff you have only
> one machine or never ever want to produce sound on any other machine, and
> have only one set of speakers, and don't care about per-application volume
> restoration or compatibility with things like esd.

I think you just described 99.9% of desktop Linux users.

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LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess

Posted Sep 19, 2008 11:07 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

What? Most Linux users don't care about e.g. muting apps that make annoying sounds while music is playing, or pushing up the volume of important alerts so they're audible over whatever else is going on? Just because they can't *do* it doesn't mean they don't *care*.

LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess

Posted Sep 22, 2008 21:49 UTC (Mon) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

I don't care. Do I get to be a data point?

LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess

Posted Sep 22, 2008 23:21 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I'll add you to my extensive and elaborate statistical baseline (from
which data is extracted using gut feelings and rand()).

LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess

Posted Dec 8, 2009 7:51 UTC (Tue) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link]

Most desktop users (in my personal opinion) couldn't give a rat's ass about controlling the volume of individual apps or doing remote streaming. I can do both on this system and I have used them (on this system) precisely...never. It's just not even a big deal.

We now seem to be headed done some "let's all become Macs" road in which configuration is removed to benefit perceived needs of desktop users (mixer settings going away in rewrites when a simple "advanced mode" toggle would have sufficed) who aren't going to use the per-app. volume settings anyway.

I don't hate PA, I just find it gets in my way. Every time I upgrade my desktop or laptop, something audio breaks or changes behavior in an undesirable fashion.

Jon.

LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess

Posted Sep 19, 2008 16:48 UTC (Fri) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

I think users almost all want independent volume controls for different audio-producing applications; but I think this is something that users, in general, think is just something computers can't do. (In particular, they want to turn down the volume on applications that just "make sounds" and therefore don't bother to include a control and on applications that want to draw the user's attention unwillingly and turn their own volume up)

I also think most users would like to play their alert sounds out the laptop speakers despite having nice speakers plugged in, but assume that's impossible (and I think it is for a lot of hardware; there's only one DAC that gets switched).