4 ms·

on arch here. haven't seen the problem yet, and I'm on 52.0. why am I not affected? I don't have pulseaudio installed (only some client libraries. lib32-libpuls

by imode 10y ago

on arch here. haven't seen the problem yet, and I'm on 52.0. why am I not affected? I don't have pulseaudio installed (only some client libraries. lib32-libpulse, to be precise). this doesn't look good. thanks for the post.

steanne 10y ago
arch is compiling it with alsa support, but only for a couple more versions. https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/53195 https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/53195
- imode 10y ago
  thanks. this is pretty scary. guess I'll be using Chromium when that day comes, as I'd rather not run PulseAudio.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    You could volunteer to rewrite Firefox’s entire ALSA backend to add multiprocess support. That’s what caused this, because Mozilla doesn’t have the manpower to rewrite two backends, and so had to choose one (with the pulse backend being preferred, as the pulse maintainers help mozilla and fix bugs on their side, while mozilla reports getting no assistance or anything from the ALSA maintainers).
    - imode 10y ago
      I wish I could. but I don't have the knowledge or the time.
    - AstralStorm 10y ago
      I would but they'd have to hire me full time. (Yes, I'd be happy to work on other parts of the browser as well.) Sad reality is that they are trying to not hire competent people while having features implemented well. Mozilla is vastly understaffed for the magnitude of the project.
      - tedmielczarek 10y ago
        While I would agree that we are vastly understaffed, we just don't have the resources to pay people to fix everything. We hire lots of extremely talented developers, but like all software projects everything is a tradeoff. We could pay someone to maintain ALSA support, but that would mean other things would not get fixed. Linux users are already a small fraction of the Firefox userbase (despite most Firefox developers using Linux as their main development environment), so how do we justify spending the resources to maintain an alternate audio backend that's only used by a small fraction of our Linux users? It's not very compelling.
        AstralStorm 10y ago
        If it is such a problem, why not hide the backend behind a nice library instead of a sound server? Say, off the top of my head, libao (after getting Xiph to fix the license), PortAudio, libsoundio, OpenAL and OpenSL come to mind. There are probably more.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
armistace 10y ago
you should be fine as arch are compiling their binary with alsa enabled https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/PKGBUILD?h=packages/firefox https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/P... line 97 for reference

by imode 10y ago

steanne 10y ago

arch is compiling it with alsa support, but only for a couple more versions. https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/53195 https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/53195

imode 10y ago
thanks. this is pretty scary. guess I'll be using Chromium when that day comes, as I'd rather not run PulseAudio.
- kuschku 10y ago
  You could volunteer to rewrite Firefox’s entire ALSA backend to add multiprocess support. That’s what caused this, because Mozilla doesn’t have the manpower to rewrite two backends, and so had to choose one (with the pulse backend being preferred, as the pulse maintainers help mozilla and fix bugs on their side, while mozilla reports getting no assistance or anything from the ALSA maintainers).
  - imode 10y ago
    I wish I could. but I don't have the knowledge or the time.
  - AstralStorm 10y ago
    I would but they'd have to hire me full time. (Yes, I'd be happy to work on other parts of the browser as well.) Sad reality is that they are trying to not hire competent people while having features implemented well. Mozilla is vastly understaffed for the magnitude of the project.
    - tedmielczarek 10y ago
      While I would agree that we are vastly understaffed, we just don't have the resources to pay people to fix everything. We hire lots of extremely talented developers, but like all software projects everything is a tradeoff. We could pay someone to maintain ALSA support, but that would mean other things would not get fixed. Linux users are already a small fraction of the Firefox userbase (despite most Firefox developers using Linux as their main development environment), so how do we justify spending the resources to maintain an alternate audio backend that's only used by a small fraction of our Linux users? It's not very compelling.
      - AstralStorm 10y ago
        If it is such a problem, why not hide the backend behind a nice library instead of a sound server? Say, off the top of my head, libao (after getting Xiph to fix the license), PortAudio, libsoundio, OpenAL and OpenSL come to mind. There are probably more.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

armistace 10y ago

you should be fine as arch are compiling their binary with alsa enabled https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/PKGBUILD?h=packages/firefox https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/P... line 97 for reference