[PlanetCCRMA] Pulseaudio and qjackctl

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Thu, 2009-05-14 at 16:10 -0400, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 3:52 PM, Jeff Sandys wrote:
> >
> >
> > Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
> >>
> >> While you can use jack over pulse that's not the way I would use it.
> >>
> > What is the plan for PlanetCCRMA and Fedora 11 with pulseaudio?  (I can't
> > test because of problems updating the live usb)
> >
> 
> The plan is to gradually increase the heat and flamethrowing as
> pulseaudio is driving more and more people crazy. And eventually to
> convince the maintainer (or FESCo) to remove it from Fedora.
> 
> That's the best we could do for now. I have a hope to have a
> pulse-free Fedora by F-13.

(sorry for the delay in answering)

I imagine that will not happen. 

Pulse addresses a real problem: how to get regular desktop applications
(including the desktop itself) to cooperate and access a single sound
card in an orderly manner. ALSA won't do it and there are no other
alternatives AFAIK. Jack is not the answer either, it was not designed
to solve that problem. Pulse or something that fills that need is
needed. If somebody wants to design yet another system (and there have
been _many_ tries in the past) then they should go ahead and do it, but
I would strongly suggest that they spend that time in helping with Pulse
development instead. 

The main problem I think is that Pulse was pushed into the distribution
way before it was ready (endemic with Fedora). Then it got (deservedly)
a bad reputation as it caused more problems than it solved. A bad
initial reputation is _very_ hard to overcome. 

At the moment the developers of Pulse are aware (I think) of the
problems and are working to solve them. In particular the next version
(for f11 or f12?) will interact better with Jack, releasing the
soundcard when Jack needs to use it. 

My perception of the Pulse developers is that sometimes they tend to
ignore reality because it _is_ complicated, but that may be just me. The
result is that sometimes decisions are made that break systems and then
it should be our task to bring that to their attention (witness the
mixer flame war that happened a month ago in fedora-devel). 

-- Fernando