Is Pulse Audio the worst trajedy in the history of Linux?

apexx · Post by **apexx** » Thu Nov 25, 2010 8:09 am

mads: Thank you!!!
I removed pulseaudio and got rid of three annoying problems:
1) sound settings reset at boot even having alsactl restore at startup applications
2) mic working randomly
3) first call in Skype was always garbled

mads · Post by **mads** » Thu Nov 25, 2010 10:07 am

Thanks everyone.

Your positive responses made me finally go ahead and dedicate a new post to the topic.

"How To: Completely remove PulseAudio & replace it with ALSA": http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=60485

Titanium_Falcon · Post by **Titanium_Falcon** » Fri Nov 26, 2010 5:10 am

Thanks! Just what I needed to know. Got pSX working properly now

tinca · Post by **tinca** » Fri Nov 26, 2010 8:33 am

"Is Pulse Audio the worst trajedy in the history of Linux?"

as this thread has been running for about five weeks and has been viewed by over 650 people, and as there are only 11 people involved in the thread, it would appear that it is not the "worse tragedy"

Best regards Keith

mads · Post by **mads** » Fri Nov 26, 2010 12:11 pm

tinca wrote:"Is Pulse Audio the worst trajedy in the history of Linux?"

as this thread has been running for about five weeks and has been viewed by over 650 people, and as there are only 11 people involved in the thread, it would appear that it is not the "worse tragedy"

Best regards Keith

Hi tinca/Keith.

Two points:

1- It seems to me that your answer is somewhat confusing. Is your answer based upon the mathematical equation, [(this thread has been running for about five weeks) + (has been viewed by over 650 people) + (there are only 11 people involved) = it would appear that it is not the "worse tragedy"], or is it based upon your own observations of and experiences with PulseAudio?

2- Another conclusion one could draw from your analysis is that the question asked in this thread is a difficult one to answer.

tinca · Post by **tinca** » Fri Nov 26, 2010 1:02 pm

mads wrote:
tinca wrote:"Is Pulse Audio the worst trajedy in the history of Linux?"

as this thread has been running for about five weeks and has been viewed by over 650 people, and as there are only 11 people involved in the thread, it would appear that it is not the "worse tragedy"

Best regards Keith
Hi tinca/Keith.

Two points:

1- It seems to me that your answer is somewhat confusing. Is your answer based wupon the mathematical equation, [(this thread has been running for about five weeks) + (has been viewed by over 650 people) + (there are only 11 people involved) = it would appear that it is not the "worse tragedy"], or is it based upon your own observations of and experiences with PulseAudio?

2- Another conclusion one could draw from your analysis is that the question asked in this thread is a difficult one to answer.

Mads, with regards to point number one.

My answer is not confusing in the least. If "Pulse Audio" was causing a majority of users problems, then there would be more than just eleven people sharing the original post. I think that like me they read about it but have not experienced it themselves, so do not contribute.

I have Mint 9, Gnome, 64 bit running on this computer and I have never seen anything relating to "Pulse Audio" appear on my screen, so based on that one thing alone, then my answer has to be "No", it is not the worst tragedy. My knowledge of "Pulse Audio" is nil, as like I said, I have never experienced it, and I have made no effort to find out more about it.

point 2

the question is not difficult to answer, you either have the problem or you don't have the problem. Then it becomes a simple "Yes" or "No".

Best regards Keith

Nick_Djinn · Post by **Nick_Djinn** » Sat Nov 27, 2010 5:17 pm

tinca wrote:"Is Pulse Audio the worst trajedy in the history of Linux?"

as this thread has been running for about five weeks and has been viewed by over 650 people, and as there are only 11 people involved in the thread, it would appear that it is not the "worse tragedy"

Best regards Keith

This is a huge assumption. How do you know that the people who didnt post have not also had problems with pulse audio?

The only problem/bug that gets more hits than Pulse Audio for Ubuntu based distros is Grub.

Pulse Audio has potential, but its implantation is Alpha at best. It needs to be stable for 99% of users or better. I dont believe that it is. While I dont have hard statistics, the number of people with sound problems since PA has been implemented is overwhelming. A lot of people probably dont even know that their sound problems are Pulse Audio related. They just know that they start off with sound and then it craps out while they are watching a movie. People who have onboard sound and also have a second better quality sound card seem to especially have problems. People dont want to have to ditch their high end sound cards that they paid for to go back to a sub-par onboard sound quality.

Pulse Audio is not bad software, but its implantation is not ready for mainstream users who dont know how to trouble shoot. People are probably just walking away from Ubuntu/Mint when their sound doesnt work without even trying to figure out whats causing it.

Whats worse, People tend to get lots of insulting answers to their sound problems, like asking if their volume is turned on. Im sure this helped some people, but an acknowledgement that Pulse Audio causes sound problem complaints by the metric ton should be included in any sound bug complaints.

Pulse Audio will probably be excellent in 5 years. It can do more than ALSA but its too unstable to be anything but Alpha.....or maybe its not Pulse Audios fault. Maybe its Ubuntu's implementation of it.

Nick_Djinn · Post by **Nick_Djinn** » Sat Nov 27, 2010 5:22 pm

tinca wrote:
mads wrote:
tinca wrote: If "Pulse Audio" was causing a majority of users problems,

Who claimed that it was causing a majority of users problems?

If it only caused problems for 3% to 5% of users, thats HUGE. That could be millions or hundreds of thousands of people.

A lot of people have already figured out how to trouble shoot or remove pulse audio years previously. There is a lot of traffic on threads that talk about replacing PA with ALSA.

It doesnt have to cause problems for a majority of users to be a serious problem. It can cause problems for a significant minority and still be one of the most prolific bugs we are dealing with.

tinca · Post by **tinca** » Sun Nov 28, 2010 7:21 am

Nick,

you say

"This is a huge assumption. How do you know that the people who didnt post have not also had problems with pulse audio?"

My answer is that I don't, but I can't believe that people who have a problem with sound including "Pulse Audio" would NOT have posted their own comments, even out of just frustration or anger. What is the point of reading about the problem and then not contributing?. It would be nice to see some poll to be able to see how big a problem this is?.

Does it mainly effect Laptops and Netbooks?. I was just wondering if the newer hardware is catching Linux out, as we always lag behind new hardware, that is just the nature of Linux.

As I have said earlier, I have no problem with "Pulse Audio", and if I did not read about it on this forum, I would not even know of its existence.

Nick_Djinn · Post by **Nick_Djinn** » Sun Nov 28, 2010 6:10 pm

Somebody could just as easily conclude that Pulse Audio sucks if a thread praising it got 600 hits but only 8 people spoke favorably of it.

There is nothing but a series of straw men (I didnt claim that a majority have problems with PA, only that a lot more people have problems with sound because of PA than should have problems....its one of the most common problems, but I never said "most"), non sequiters (The number of hits a thread gets means nothing, for or against. We could just as easily assume that they agree but didnt post anything), and plain old assumptions.

The objective fact of the matter is that Pulse Audio is one of the problem apps that not only doesnt work right, but causes your whole system not to work right because your computer is a lot less functional without reliable sound.....Pulse Audio causes a LOT....maybe not all or even most, but a LOT of people problems....Too many in my opinion for them to be making it mandatory.

This alpha software should be in the repos for those who need it, but it shouldnt be the default setup.

Does it mainly effect Laptops and Netbooks?. I was just wondering if the newer hardware is catching Linux out, as we always lag behind new hardware, that is just the nature of Linux.

As I have said earlier, I have no problem with "Pulse Audio", and if I did not read about it on this forum, I would not even know of its existence

It affects both desktops and laptops, older and newer. It affects all types of users from every demographic. Most people with sound problems dont even know that its the fault of Pulse Audio much if not most of the time.

If you dont even know what you are arguing about, I would suggest not arguing.

linuxviolin · Post by **linuxviolin** » Sun Nov 28, 2010 7:22 pm

To answer to the question of the topic, yes, PulseAudio is one of the more crappy, useless and stupid things in Linux.

But there are others...

tinca · Post by **tinca** » Mon Nov 29, 2010 4:09 am

Nick_Djinn

Re: Is Pulse Audio the worst trajedy in the history of Linux

No it ain't

A bigger tragedy for Linux is when a post from a forum member ends with rudeness.

Best regards Keith

Titanium_Falcon · Post by **Titanium_Falcon** » Mon Nov 29, 2010 5:57 am

I also found it hard to balance the multiple volume controls. Sound was constantly breaking up. Now it's gone, I have no problems. Better off without it in my, albeit very short, experience. Problematic.

JonM33 · Post by **JonM33** » Mon Nov 29, 2010 1:04 pm

Nick_Djinn wrote:Im starting to lose hope that Ubuntu will ever ditch PulseAudio or even FIX it. There are bugs that have continued unresolved since 8.04. Sound refuses to work on my main computer, which has a built in sound card + a nicer PCI card. Now they have added this travesty to KDE and Xubuntu....is it also in Mint XFCE now?

Can anybody recommend a good modern user friendly distro (end user/noob friendly, rather than dev friendly) that does not use this absolutely terrible program, or at least found a way to make it work?

Works without a problem on my Audigy2 ZS sound card that's more than 5 years old.

Nightstrike2009 · Post by **Nightstrike2009** » Wed May 18, 2011 11:43 am

Nah its got to be "Unity" these days LMAO

exploder · Post by **exploder** » Wed May 18, 2011 12:03 pm

or plymouth

Nightstrike2009 · Post by **Nightstrike2009** » Wed May 18, 2011 2:58 pm

or both Unity and Plymouth LMAO

DrHu · Post by **DrHu** » Wed May 18, 2011 4:10 pm

I don't think it is a tragedy, however other Linux distributions often have some good explanations about its use and how to make it work better..
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio

sjonesy · Post by **sjonesy** » Fri Jul 08, 2011 3:12 am

tinca wrote:Nick,

you say

"This is a huge assumption. How do you know that the people who didnt post have not also had problems with pulse audio?"

What is the point of reading about the problem and then not contributing?.

I know this an older thread but i couldnt resist-----
I dunno, research perhaps? Pulse is a MAJOR pain in the arse in a distro thats just supposed to work... In my Opinion, it should never have shipped with ANYTHING. I don't care how elegant or noble an idea it is, when something doesn't work, you don't just ship it and let the community sort it out. Ship it IF and WHEN it can be shown that the major bugs are worked out.

sjonesy · Post by **sjonesy** » Fri Jul 08, 2011 3:21 am

tinca wrote:Nick_Djinn

Re: Is Pulse Audio the worst trajedy in the history of Linux

No it ain't

A bigger tragedy for Linux is when a post from a forum member ends with rudeness.

Best regards Keith

my god thats funny...are we as forum and linux community members held to a higher standard because....