"The plural of anecdote isn't data"

Posted Feb 24, 2014 19:00 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: "The plural of anecdote isn't data" by mgb
Parent article: Debian TC vote on init system coupling

Tens of thousands of people with unreproducible Pulseaudio problems eventually lead to those problems becoming reproducible, being traced to buggy ALSA drivers, and being fixed there (rather than in Pulseaudio) as is proper. Pulseaudio is now quite stable.

What would you prefer, Pulseaudio working around the driver bugs? I know what I'd want: a simpler Pulseaudio and less-buggy ALSA drivers, thank you very much.

"The plural of anecdote isn't data"

Posted Feb 24, 2014 19:25 UTC (Mon) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link] (1 responses)

I cannot speak for those other 9999 unhappy pulseaudio users, but I suffer from semi-reproducible pulse problems almost every day. It may be "quite stable", but that is not the same as saying that it works reliably. I continue to use it only because it has been so deeply integrated into the desktop configuration that pulling it out is more work than having to kill and restart the server when it chokes or freezes. And no, these are not alsa-related problems.

I can hear you thinking "And this is relevant how?". Well, it serves as an example of how difficult, or at least annoying, it is to have to work around faults in a subsystem that has become too tightly integrated. I have had no problems with systemd myself, but I sympathize with those who worry about the consequences of allowing it to subsume more and more system functions.

"The plural of anecdote isn't data"

Posted Feb 25, 2014 2:10 UTC (Tue) by ermo (subscriber, #86690) [Link]

"(...) it serves as an example of how difficult, or at least annoying, it is to have to work around faults in a subsystem that has become too tightly integrated. I have had no problems with systemd myself, but I sympathize with those who worry about the consequences of allowing it to subsume more and more system functions."

To a desktop user, working sound reproduction is considered a basic necessity, i.e. 'must-have'. To a server admin, sound reproduction might not be considered a basic necessity, but merely 'nice-to-have'.

To a desktop user, a working init etc. system is a basic requirement. To a server admin, a working init etc. system is a basic requirement. In other words, a working init system is 'must-have' in both cases.

You can probably see where this argument is going: Comparing the two on equal terms is perhaps slightly misleading if only for the fact that there is a bigger group of people who have a vested (commercial) interest in the init system just working.

It thus seems reasonable to suggest that, if a problematic edge-case is discovered in systemd, there is likely to be much more pressure to get it fixed ASAP than if PA needs to be restarted every now and again on your box, which (lest we forget) is running a desktop OS which only has a market share of a couple of percent or so if we're being generous. Unless I'm mistaken, the majority of the Internet runs on Linux-based servers?

That said, I haven't noticed any issues with PA on my machines in, like, forever; my personal impression is that it tends to "Just Work™" regardless of distribution these days.