[Klug-general] Linux Sound Programming

[George Prowse]

On 21/03/2010 10:51, Karl Lattimer wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-03-21 at 10:28 +0000, George Prowse wrote:
>> On 21/03/2010 09:56, Karl Lattimer wrote:
>>>
>>>> All of them, with perhaps the exception of ALSA seems like it was
>>>> dreampt up in someone's potting shed as an answer to a problem that
>>>> never should have existed.
>>>
>>> I might forward that little snippet to Lennart Poettering... He loves
>>> Pulseaudio abuse :P
>>>
>>> Developing for pulseaudio is no different from developing for ALSA as
>>> pulse is just a way of managing all the gumpf that goes on, giving you
>>> application specific volume controls and various other nifty features
>>> which make sound useful to the desktop user. It is akin to CoreAudio on
>>> macosx but with some extra features I think makes it pretty darn
>>> nifty...
>>>
>>> Considering that Lennart, one of the most talented developers in the
>>> world if you don't believe me, check his stats;
>>> http://www.ohloh.net/accounts/mezcalero would have designed this in a
>>> potting shed is a pretty big insult considering; "Your search - george
>>> prowse - did not match anything." on Ohloh.net
>>
>> I have nothing out in the wild or anywhere else and I certainly wouldn't
>> never even dream of judging myself on the basis of an ego search.
>
> You're basically saying "it's OK to criticise even though I'm not
> qualified to do so". My search on ohloh was to point that out so nobody
> else on this list thinks you are actually qualified to criticise a
> developer of Lennart's stature. There is no "ego search" involved here,
> quite the contrary, I was showing how you have no right to be so
> egotistical as to criticise someone far far more qualified in his work
> than you are.

I'm not criticising him; I have never even heard of him, never will and 
couldn't care less about him. You seem to have taken offense at a 
flippant remark because you have happened to reply to an email by him on 
a list.
>
>>>
>>> Pulseaudio may not have been perfect through the development, but it's
>>> getting pretty damn close to where it is supposed to be.
>>>
>>> Just to clairfy the "problem that never should have existed";
>>>
>>> * ALSA and OSS lock the sound hardware
>>> * System sounds at the same volume as the movie you're watching
>>> * Multiple applications using the sound hardware causing blocking e.g.
>>> play a game for an hour and all the system sounds that happened during,
>>> playback one after the other.
>>> * Real time mixing of audio channels
>>>
>>> ALSA is a great way of communicating with the hardware but it provides
>>> no user space management of the audio.
>>>
>> My point about any of them/all of them is that people are *still* trying
>> to sort these things out when it should have been done 15 years ago.
>> Nothing has changed. The have a sound card, they have speakers and they
>> have drivers.
>
> Lots of things have changed in 15 years, I won't bore you with a list.

Yeah, OJ Simpson, Barings Bank and Bosnia for a start.
>
>> The problem is that no-one can decide anything - sound or otherwise.
>> Everything just gets drowned by bickering whether foo should be in
>> kernelspace or userspace and then some people suggest something radical
>> and they get shot down (probably much in the same way that i'm doing
>> here) and never come back.
>
> There is no bickering, there is kernel space ALSA, and Pulse because non
> of that stuff should be in kernel space... This isn't an argument it was
> a discussion before the pulseaudio project was started. That's right a
> nice mature grown up discussion with kernel devs and app devs.
>
> You weren't in the loop on the discussions so you cannot judge the
> actions of those involved... Read the mailing lists, you'll see how it
> came together.

How it came together doesn't matter in the slightest, what matters is 
results. Anyway, I was talking generally.
>
>> It's a mess out there and until people stop thinking that everything is
>> just fine then nothing will ever happen. Pulseaudio could be the
>> greatest thing on the face of the planet, we could all bow down, worship
>> it and Tom Cruise could jump up and down on a sofa about it but until it
>> becomes synonymous with sound on linux then most people will never know.
>
> I think it's already synonymous with sound on linux if you're well
> informed enough to realise that. It isn't a mess out there, it's pretty
> sane, but muddying the waters with FUD as you're doing is detrimental to
> everyone.
>
Yeah, it's synonymous with sound if you first picked up an 
Ubuntu-derived cd 6 months ago. I hope it lives up to its promises, I 
really do. It will be the first thing in linux that has since udev