Why does Cinnamon need PulseAudio

[Daveroski]

Why is Cinnamon a dependant of pulseaudio?
I like the desktop.
I don't want pulse audio.
Can't have the one without the other.
Unless I want to do a 'workaround'
Is there a logical reason for this dependency which takes the freedom to choose away from users?

[altair4]

Just in case anyone wants some perspective on this ..............

If I want to remove pulseaudio from Xubuntu this happens:

The following packages will be REMOVED:
indicator-sound pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-x11n

If I want to remove it from Ubuntu:

The following extra packages will be installed:
gnome-control-center gnome-control-center-data gnome-settings-daemon
libgoa-backend-1.0-1
The following packages will be REMOVED:
indicator-sound libcanberra-pulse pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
pulseaudio-module-x11 ubuntu-desktop unity-control-center
unity-control-center-signon webaccounts-extension-common xul-ext-webaccounts
The following NEW packages will be installed:
gnome-control-center gnome-control-center-data gnome-settings-daemon
libgoa-backend-1.0-1

And If I want to remove it from Mint Cinnamon:

The following packages will be REMOVED:
cinnamon cinnamon-bluetooth cinnamon-control-center libcanberra-pulse
mint-meta-cinnamon pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
pulseaudio-module-x11

I don't have an answer as to why but it seems to be more connected to it's Ubuntu / Gnome roots than it does any desire to take away anyone's freedom to choose.

EDIT: It could be a consequence of the "Pottering Effect" - you know .... Lennart Poettering .... Mr. SystemD. This is one of his creations and he does have a knack for making his creations interconnect with other things that you wouldn't think are or should be interconnected.

[Daveroski]

The subject was the basis of the question.
That you would change it was plain wrong.
Another example of "freedom" the way it was elegantly removed no doubt.

[killer de bug]

PulseAudio is the standard for sound since 10 years. Removing it makes few sense.
Additionally, the sound applet is part of Cinnamon, is a core applet, and is dependent of PulseAudio IIRC. Therefore, yes PulseAudio is a dependency.

[Flemur]

Unless I want to do a 'workaround'

You could try disabling pulseaudio and see what happens.

I just did an experiment with synaptic (Mint 17.1 Xfce base)
synaptic -> Install Cinnamon
Generates a big list of extra stuff to install, including pulseaudio.

Then
synaptic -> pulseaudio -> Unmark (= don't install).
and it seemed happy to install cinnamon (and everything else?) without pulseaudio. I didn't do the actual install, though...

So perhaps
synaptic -> pulseaudio -> remove
then "unmark" all the other stuff it wants to remove, would work.

It could be that pulseaudio is recommended but not necessary. I've seen big differences between
apt-get install <package>
and
apt-get install <package> --no-install-recommends
and it seems that synaptic installs the "recommends" for a package by default.

[xenopeek]

Cinnamon is licensed under GPL so all your freedoms are intact and you can modify Cinnamon to fit your needs. The Cinnamon and Linux Mint developers use various toolkits, libraries, and engines to enable them to develop their software and build their distribution efficiently without having to reinvent every wheel. You focus on PulseAudio but the other toolkits, libraries, and engines that Cinnamon depends on (except for a select few) don't give you a "choice" either. Have a look at the long list of dependencies. E.g. you're stuck with GTK+ as your graphical toolkit while you might prefer Qt; you're stuck with the SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine while you might prefer V8; and so on. The developers make choices to efficiently spend their time and to best meet the needs of their users.

PulseAudio is a mature sound server that serves the needs of the Cinnamon developers, the Linux Mint developers, and its users. It might not fit your needs, but that doesn't mean any choice has been taken away from you. Use the software as-is, modify it to fit your needs, or use something else is; the choice is with you and not impeded in any way.

If you are experiencing problems on your computer which you think are related to PulseAudio, I'd recommend asking for help on diagnosing the problem.

[phd21]

Hi,

I agree with xenopeek's assessment. Plus, what's wrong with PulseAudio, why would you not want to use it? Works great on my system and all the Linux Mint editions I've tried and experimented with.

Although I might add, "is there another alternative to PulseAudio available to Linux Mint users?

[killer de bug]

Although I might add, "is there another alternative to PulseAudio available to Linux Mint users?

ALSA?

[mike acker]

Why is Cinnamon a dependant of pulseaudio?
I like the desktop.
I don't want pulse audio.{snip}

can't you just run ALSA ? I've been playing around with both PCM and ALSA -- one seems to be just as good as the other ....

ALSA is supposed to be the "new & improved" -- which we like "new & improved" -- as soon as we get it all working !!

You may have to diddle around in the settings and preferences of the various programs to find the selections and options

[MartyMint]

As much as PulseAudio irritates me on occassion, I've been using Linux long enough to remember working with sound before PulseAudio.


That was not fun.

[Flemur]

You can run alsa without pulseaudio, quite nicely and with no loss of functionality, but pulse requires alsa (or OSS?).
I don't use pulseaudio because it sometimes causes problems and doesn't do anything useful.

[MartyMint]

PulseAudio handles two mixers (one USB and one analog) as well as simultaneous HDMI audio and Bluetooth audio to my studio monitor.

I know PulseAudio gets crapped on quite a bit, largely because it's from the same guy that brought us systemd...

[MartyMint]

Phonon is probably my biggest reason for not taking KDE more seriously.

[DrHu]

Pulseaudio is OK, but as far as I remember the standard (defacto) was ALSA
--for the longest time..

And it will have to do with Ubuntu(and Ubuntu based Linux OS's) preferences..

[lestcape]

Thats is pretty simple to answer. In linux, if you have an app without a dependency, is worse than have a dependency to the wrong places. Think, that all default applets, desklets, extensions are applications, then they need to have dependency to other system packages, but they are not really a packages, so whatever dependency that they need are placed in cinnamon packages and well (as is his packages container), yes, this is not the right place, but is the best possible one for the current packages available.

The solution is support dependencies in the applet desklets and extensions, and move the current dependency to the specific applet/desklet... The problem is that cinnamon can be installed on different systems and then they have different packages manager and different packages name for the same app.

Anyway, there are some possible solutions to this other problem. This will be delegate the task of handle the dependency to the devs of the distro, but who will do this in the distro? No one, because is a mint project, not an Arch one or a Fedora, so this decision can not be taking. Another, will be use the packagekit to resolve dependencies, but packageskit is not good as can be a default packages manager in any distro, so will be resolve a problem and cause another.


Another solution is create a general software, like packages kit, but specific for resolve the cinnamon dependencies only and call inside to the real implementation in the distro, the problem is that you will never end as there are a lot of differents packages managers implementation. Anyway i try to do this, but my attempt fail as cinnamon devs never end to changed and improved the things. As a result this break my code. Is not like a complaint, as is what i want, a better cinnamon.
Please, after know this and if you have a better solution to this problematics, share it. I will implement your solution and propose it to the cinnamon devs to be merged.
Regards.

[InkKnife]

The PulseAudio system wide equalizer is very important to me. I have damaged hearing at certain frequencies and being able to EQ the sound system wide really, REALLY makes things nicer for me.
The thing about choice is that while GNU/Linux does offer a great deal of choice, not every distro is going to offer all those choices.
If Mint does not suit your audio needs I bet there are several other very nice distros that will. That is the choice you are looking for.

[Rocky Bennett]

I'm new around here, what is PulseAudio?

[Juan Jimenez]

I'm new around here, what is PulseAudio?

PulseAudio is one (the best so far?) open source sound system available for Linux.

I agree with xenopeek's assessment. Plus, what's wrong with PulseAudio, why would you not want to use it?

Not (too) much wrong with it. But some of us are running Linux Mint because we like its many features but would prefer to remove/disable anything that could help us get better performance. An example is when running under a Virtual Machine for development purposes.

Now, does anyone know what is the safest/best way to disable PulseAudio on Mint 17.1 ?

[Morgan Krieg]

I'm new around here, what is PulseAudio?

PulseAudio is one (the best so far?) open source sound system available for Linux.

Not for me and many others who end up having to go through the PulseAudio replacement process after every new install. Though I wonder why for some people it works well and for others horribly. Hardware incomparability? If yes, I have to have bad luck because it's a second computer on which PulseAudio didn't work well.

[DrHu]

The solution to dependency issues I like is zero install: 0install.net (web based app installs)
http://0install.net/

• Even if it is not the standard distribution stance..