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I don't know about (2). Alsa "just worked" when pulse audio was released and PA did not "just work" for like 8 years after the first release. Seems like softwa

I don't know about (2). Alsa "just worked" when pulse audio was released and PA did not "just work" for like 8 years after the first release. Seems like software history revisionism to me.

RedShift1 5y ago
Consider me in the same camp. When I set up audio on my linux pc back in the day, the only thing I had to do was enable the alsa daemon to restore volume levels at boot and everything just worked. Then later Pulsaudio was kinda forced on me and I didn't (and still don't) understand why it was needed, it was something about allow multiple applications outputting audio at the same time but that worked just fine with alsa? Plus it didn't work well: under load audio would stutter which was extremely annoying as I listened to music quite frequently while working on my computer, a problem I did not have with alsa. So there I was with a shiny AMD Athlon 64 3500+ that couldn't even play mp3's straight.
jraph 5y ago
Alsa just worked but had limitations. Some apps grabbed sound and you could not play sounds from other apps. Often, one app could play sound at a time. It depended on whether your sound card could handle several streams IIRC. Each major desktop environment had its own sound server to work around these limitations (KDE's aRts, Gnome's ESD). PulseAudio let us have a common stack instead. There were bugs (PulseAudio was probably a bit buggy at first, and also hit audio driver bugs because of the new ways of using them). The transition was rough and PulseAudio is not perfect too but is it there for reasons and solves many issues. Now it is being replaced by PipeWire, probably for the best (more efficient, can replace JACK too, making sound management much easier on Linux), but PipeWire leverages experience from PulseAudio. I lived the transition to PulseAudio and it went well for me and probably a lot (the majority?) of people. Some things could probably have been handled better, especially the (too early?) transition. I think PulseAudio still is/was a good thing.
esarbe 5y ago
While PA in the beginning certainly wasn't manna from heaven, it still was a godsend; pulseaudio exposed all the inconsistencies, flaws and straight out bugs in the alsa driver implementations. The reason so many people had issues with PA was not PA but the brokenness of the underlying system that PA exposed for the first time when trying to use all these drivers in a systematic way and build functionality on top of it. It took years of fixing all the drivers and PA - unfortunately - got a lot of undeserved flak. PA is the reason that Linux has a halfway decent audio subsystem, being able to deal with all the modern devices; thank you, PA devs. I find it hilarious that people are festive about PA being replaced by Pipewire - if PA hadn't paved the way, the Linux driver landscape would not be in such a good shape today and Pipewire would 'fail' in exactly the same way that PA 'failed.
- guywhocodes 5y ago
  I'm grateful we got a reasonable system out of PA eventually but damn it took time and I agree it is today better than what we had with ALSA. But as I remember it audio sucked with ALSA until it didn't and then we had about two good years of audio before PA came about. Then we had 8~ years of crap again and yes a lot of it was definitely due to really bad drivers and masked inconsistencies in the past. That's not my point tho, my point is that PA didn't sweep in and save us, in fact it at first pushed us back A LOT. And claiming otherwise is a disservice to ourselves when we consider additional radical change. Such as Pipewire and and Wayland.
  - esarbe 5y ago
    > in fact it at first pushed us back A LOT That argument I don't quite follow. Would you consider rephrasing it? My question is; how did PA set back Linux sound if it did expose all those flaws in the audio driver in the first place?
    - guywhocodes 5y ago
      Not everyone is a power user. At this time I was in university and Linux went from a reasonable choice to an unreasonable due to sound not working again. If you care about real world usage, PA set us back years when Ubuntu made it default.
      - esarbe 5y ago
        > Linux went from a reasonable choice to an unreasonable due to sound not working again. But that's the crux, isn't it? Linux sound was not not-working because of PA. Linux sound was not working because it was fundamentally broken with drivers that had wildly different behaviors. Everyone was hacking around broken drivers all the time, I distinctly remember how I had to recompile the kernel back then to get some custom-fixes for my setup in because the driver was so kaput. Only with the introduction of PA was there finally a way to test and evaluate the drivers in a systematic fashion. So, in short, my point is this; any software that - in this broken state of Linux audio - tried to introduce a software that made available the features the drivers proclaimed would have run into exactly the same problem as PA. Because PA didn't introduce the problem, PA made it visible. It's like blaming the doctor for diagnosing the illness. So, while your experience was that sound suddenly wasn't working anymore because Ubuntu configured the default setup to use PA, for lots of people that sound never worked this was fine - because their drivers weren't broken.

I don't know about (2). Alsa "just worked" when pulse audio was released and PA did not "just work" for like 8 years after the first release. Seems like software history revisionism to me.

RedShift1 5y ago

Consider me in the same camp. When I set up audio on my linux pc back in the day, the only thing I had to do was enable the alsa daemon to restore volume levels at boot and everything just worked. Then later Pulsaudio was kinda forced on me and I didn't (and still don't) understand why it was needed, it was something about allow multiple applications outputting audio at the same time but that worked just fine with alsa? Plus it didn't work well: under load audio would stutter which was extremely annoying as I listened to music quite frequently while working on my computer, a problem I did not have with alsa. So there I was with a shiny AMD Athlon 64 3500+ that couldn't even play mp3's straight.

jraph 5y ago

Alsa just worked but had limitations. Some apps grabbed sound and you could not play sounds from other apps. Often, one app could play sound at a time. It depended on whether your sound card could handle several streams IIRC. Each major desktop environment had its own sound server to work around these limitations (KDE's aRts, Gnome's ESD). PulseAudio let us have a common stack instead. There were bugs (PulseAudio was probably a bit buggy at first, and also hit audio driver bugs because of the new ways of using them). The transition was rough and PulseAudio is not perfect too but is it there for reasons and solves many issues. Now it is being replaced by PipeWire, probably for the best (more efficient, can replace JACK too, making sound management much easier on Linux), but PipeWire leverages experience from PulseAudio. I lived the transition to PulseAudio and it went well for me and probably a lot (the majority?) of people. Some things could probably have been handled better, especially the (too early?) transition. I think PulseAudio still is/was a good thing.

esarbe 5y ago

While PA in the beginning certainly wasn't manna from heaven, it still was a godsend; pulseaudio exposed all the inconsistencies, flaws and straight out bugs in the alsa driver implementations. The reason so many people had issues with PA was not PA but the brokenness of the underlying system that PA exposed for the first time when trying to use all these drivers in a systematic way and build functionality on top of it. It took years of fixing all the drivers and PA - unfortunately - got a lot of undeserved flak. PA is the reason that Linux has a halfway decent audio subsystem, being able to deal with all the modern devices; thank you, PA devs. I find it hilarious that people are festive about PA being replaced by Pipewire - if PA hadn't paved the way, the Linux driver landscape would not be in such a good shape today and Pipewire would 'fail' in exactly the same way that PA 'failed.

guywhocodes 5y ago
I'm grateful we got a reasonable system out of PA eventually but damn it took time and I agree it is today better than what we had with ALSA. But as I remember it audio sucked with ALSA until it didn't and then we had about two good years of audio before PA came about. Then we had 8~ years of crap again and yes a lot of it was definitely due to really bad drivers and masked inconsistencies in the past. That's not my point tho, my point is that PA didn't sweep in and save us, in fact it at first pushed us back A LOT. And claiming otherwise is a disservice to ourselves when we consider additional radical change. Such as Pipewire and and Wayland.
- esarbe 5y ago
  > in fact it at first pushed us back A LOT That argument I don't quite follow. Would you consider rephrasing it? My question is; how did PA set back Linux sound if it did expose all those flaws in the audio driver in the first place?
  - guywhocodes 5y ago
    Not everyone is a power user. At this time I was in university and Linux went from a reasonable choice to an unreasonable due to sound not working again. If you care about real world usage, PA set us back years when Ubuntu made it default.
    - esarbe 5y ago
      > Linux went from a reasonable choice to an unreasonable due to sound not working again. But that's the crux, isn't it? Linux sound was not not-working because of PA. Linux sound was not working because it was fundamentally broken with drivers that had wildly different behaviors. Everyone was hacking around broken drivers all the time, I distinctly remember how I had to recompile the kernel back then to get some custom-fixes for my setup in because the driver was so kaput. Only with the introduction of PA was there finally a way to test and evaluate the drivers in a systematic fashion. So, in short, my point is this; any software that - in this broken state of Linux audio - tried to introduce a software that made available the features the drivers proclaimed would have run into exactly the same problem as PA. Because PA didn't introduce the problem, PA made it visible. It's like blaming the doctor for diagnosing the illness. So, while your experience was that sound suddenly wasn't working anymore because Ubuntu configured the default setup to use PA, for lots of people that sound never worked this was fine - because their drivers weren't broken.