LPC: Linux audio: it's a mess

The conclusion that you'd spent a lot of time moaning about ALSA was based on reading ALSA's archives in the past and on observing that there is (was?) a lengthy list of alleged problems in ALSA on your PulseAudio site. As far as I know I've never met you in person, and so I have no opinions about you except as a software developer.

ALSA isn't perfect, that's true, I have several enhancement bugs open and I've had discussions with ALSA people about various aspects -- notably I wanted a way to determine which ALSA level ("volume") control, if any, is the most appropriate to tweak for a PCM stream I have open, thus making it possible to make good use of a hardware PCM stream mixer as provided in say an SBLive. The kernel drivers are also not perfect, the driver for my Intel chipset can't properly handle a running audio output during suspend for example. But PulseAudio doesn't (and shouldn't try to) fix that problem.

I am a JACK user, so I am not, as you seem to assume, wedded to ALSA as the solution to all problems. I do think that you underestimated how mature PulseAudio needed to be before it was a better option than the default dmix configuration present in e.g. Fedora prior to PulseAudio. Not so long ago I encountered an old friend who happens to be a Google engineer (I say this only to establish that he's a smart get-things-done guy) who'd basically given up using audio on his laptop because he upgraded Fedora and that installed PulseAudio and broke the sound. PulseAudio's promise is good, but as of the last version I tried (was forced to try) it doesn't deliver that promise for a lot of people yet.

I remain to be convinced about PulseAudio. But don't imagine that I can't be convinced. I wasn't very impressed with early versions of NetworkManager either, but it got better. Probably I'd be less soured on PulseAudio if it had been in Fedora as an optional extra, to get feedback from people who know what they're getting into and perhaps have good use cases (e.g. hotplugging audio devices).