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Linux actually does this a lot. Jwz called it "Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers" more than 20 years ago, describing GNOME. Look at audio. PulseAudio is m

Linux actually does this a lot. Jwz called it "Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers" more than 20 years ago, describing GNOME. Look at audio. PulseAudio is mostly pointless and over-engineered. Breaks a lot. You could say the same about ALSA even. FreeBSD meanwhile is still using the OSS API that Linux was on in the late 90s...

jrm4 2y ago
Ha, I'm showing my age. You're right, my brain is still at "Linux around the year 2000." That being said, it's still the same problem. And I think that's why I find it odd that I haven't heard the argument more plainly stated like: "Oh look -- right around when Linux became mainstream, it began to get worse in precisely the same ways proprietary stuff was already bad. Probably a result of more business involvement, but how can we counter it."
- logicprog 2y ago
  Setting aside dogmatic complaints ahout failing to adhere to the purity tests of a hokey old religion from the seventies, in what way is Linux actually worse? Also, assuming you're referring to it getting worse in the usual ways *nix grognards like to complain about, how is any of that "in the same ways proprietary stuff is bad"? If anything Windows for instance leans even more heavily on backwards compatibility than old Linux, not less.
rwmj 2y ago
PulseAudio has already been abandoned, the new thing is Pipewire. The specific issue with OSS was that it was never part of Linux and then with OSS 4 they made it proprietary, which killed it off entirely as far as Linux users are concerned. (FreeBSD cloned it instead.)
- asveikau 2y ago
  Oh yeah. I should have noticed that because on the Debian machine I set up for my daughter, audio suddenly broke, and it started working again when I removed pipewire. No joke, if you remove the new thing stuff magically starts working again.
  - nathanasmith 2y ago
    I had to restart Pipewire just this morning when audio randomly stopped working. It's funny as this is the first time it happened then an hour later I'm reading in this thread about Pipewire acting funny on other people's computers.
  - p_l 2y ago
    in my experience, unlike pulseaudio, pipewire is way stabler and usually works fine with less involvement. ... except when you have accidentally ended up with half-pipewire, half-pulseaudio setup due to half-forgotten instructions that were no longer applicable.
    - asveikau 2y ago
      Maybe my dist-upgrade got it into such a state. I'll try to check that out.
      - p_l 2y ago
        I ended up solving a similar case for someone else, where ultimately different programs were fighting over control of the sound devices themselves. I have to say, that pipewire under NixOS had been easier to deal with than both pulseaudio and ALSA on crappy internal sound devices (i.e. ones requiring dmix and the like). It's nearly as plug&play as ALSA on "proper" soundcard was (like when I got a Dell Precision to work with that somehow had a Creative Audigy with 256 channel sound, so no need for dmix at all...)
- jwilk 2y ago
  > The specific issue with OSS was that it was never part of Linux Huh?
  - asveikau 2y ago
    Iirc there was a version in the kernel tree, then "upstream" if you could even call it that developed it further (OSS 4.0). I think there was a company behind it and a nonfree license. Obviously that was a no-go for inclusion into mainline Linux. But alsa was/is also enormously complicated with a huge library, user mode plugins and whatnot. It reminds me of a common problem that people have where they think API and implementation are one and the same, and that you cannot swap out a different implementation keeping the simple API. People would say you need alsa because it does software mixing, but the lack of software mixing wasn't an OSS API problem, it was a problem with how it was implemented.
    - p_l 2y ago
      ALSA started replacing OSS on linux before software mixing became as critical as it ended up, because people still often had proper sound cards with multiple channel hw mixers. The assumption that you could punt software mixing to hardware or deal with limitation of only one program accessing the audio at a time took a hard hit when Intel HDA pretty much decimated presence of such hardware on PCs (AC'97 was much less pervasive for various reasons)
  - progmetaldev 2y ago
    Open Sound System (OSS), rather than Open Source Software, if I'm reading you right. I only recall because I've been toying with sound software for decades, trying to get various synths and music composition applications working. Apologies if that didn't address your confusion.
- kragen 2y ago
  didn't pipewire preserve pulseaudio compatibility though?
  - rwmj 2y ago
    It did, so I can still use pavucontrol.

jrm4 2y ago

Ha, I'm showing my age. You're right, my brain is still at "Linux around the year 2000." That being said, it's still the same problem. And I think that's why I find it odd that I haven't heard the argument more plainly stated like: "Oh look -- right around when Linux became mainstream, it began to get worse in precisely the same ways proprietary stuff was already bad. Probably a result of more business involvement, but how can we counter it."

logicprog 2y ago
Setting aside dogmatic complaints ahout failing to adhere to the purity tests of a hokey old religion from the seventies, in what way is Linux actually worse? Also, assuming you're referring to it getting worse in the usual ways *nix grognards like to complain about, how is any of that "in the same ways proprietary stuff is bad"? If anything Windows for instance leans even more heavily on backwards compatibility than old Linux, not less.

rwmj 2y ago

PulseAudio has already been abandoned, the new thing is Pipewire. The specific issue with OSS was that it was never part of Linux and then with OSS 4 they made it proprietary, which killed it off entirely as far as Linux users are concerned. (FreeBSD cloned it instead.)

asveikau 2y ago
Oh yeah. I should have noticed that because on the Debian machine I set up for my daughter, audio suddenly broke, and it started working again when I removed pipewire. No joke, if you remove the new thing stuff magically starts working again.
- nathanasmith 2y ago
  I had to restart Pipewire just this morning when audio randomly stopped working. It's funny as this is the first time it happened then an hour later I'm reading in this thread about Pipewire acting funny on other people's computers.
- p_l 2y ago
  in my experience, unlike pulseaudio, pipewire is way stabler and usually works fine with less involvement. ... except when you have accidentally ended up with half-pipewire, half-pulseaudio setup due to half-forgotten instructions that were no longer applicable.
  - asveikau 2y ago
    Maybe my dist-upgrade got it into such a state. I'll try to check that out.
    - p_l 2y ago
      I ended up solving a similar case for someone else, where ultimately different programs were fighting over control of the sound devices themselves. I have to say, that pipewire under NixOS had been easier to deal with than both pulseaudio and ALSA on crappy internal sound devices (i.e. ones requiring dmix and the like). It's nearly as plug&play as ALSA on "proper" soundcard was (like when I got a Dell Precision to work with that somehow had a Creative Audigy with 256 channel sound, so no need for dmix at all...)
jwilk 2y ago
> The specific issue with OSS was that it was never part of Linux Huh?
- asveikau 2y ago
  Iirc there was a version in the kernel tree, then "upstream" if you could even call it that developed it further (OSS 4.0). I think there was a company behind it and a nonfree license. Obviously that was a no-go for inclusion into mainline Linux. But alsa was/is also enormously complicated with a huge library, user mode plugins and whatnot. It reminds me of a common problem that people have where they think API and implementation are one and the same, and that you cannot swap out a different implementation keeping the simple API. People would say you need alsa because it does software mixing, but the lack of software mixing wasn't an OSS API problem, it was a problem with how it was implemented.
  - p_l 2y ago
    ALSA started replacing OSS on linux before software mixing became as critical as it ended up, because people still often had proper sound cards with multiple channel hw mixers. The assumption that you could punt software mixing to hardware or deal with limitation of only one program accessing the audio at a time took a hard hit when Intel HDA pretty much decimated presence of such hardware on PCs (AC'97 was much less pervasive for various reasons)
- progmetaldev 2y ago
  Open Sound System (OSS), rather than Open Source Software, if I'm reading you right. I only recall because I've been toying with sound software for decades, trying to get various synths and music composition applications working. Apologies if that didn't address your confusion.
kragen 2y ago
didn't pipewire preserve pulseaudio compatibility though?
- rwmj 2y ago
  It did, so I can still use pavucontrol.