Pulseaudio *sigh*

[Terence Simpson]

Myriam Schweingruber wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> there is a serious problem with Pulseaudio being installed by default
> for Kubuntu since Jaunty.
>
> Since this happened, we (the people who give Kubuntu, KDE and/or
> Amarok support) spend a lot of our time in the support channels,
> forums and mailing list giving instructions on how to get sound
> working on KDE, as it definitely doesn't work well with the Xine
> backend.
>
> Please consider a few facts:
>
> - KDE doesn't use Pulseaudio at all, there is not a single application
> that is meant to work with it by default,
> - Gstreamer in it's current state is not working well with Phonon
> neither, even if the Trolls have made some progress lately, it's not
> working nearly as well as Xine so far,
> - the couple Phonon + Xine works well and hardly gives any trouble in KDE,
> - Pulseaudio apparently only works correctly in combination with Gstreamer,
> - Amarok and Dragonplayer (as well as Kaffeine AFAIK) very often don't
> play sound when Pulseaudio is installed, and this seems to happen for
> many Jaunty users, who tend to be quite frustrated by that experience.
>
> Shouldn't Kubuntu work by default for most of the users? Well, it
> doesn't, and it is a frequent reason for people to either abandon
> Amarok or KDE or even change distribution... which is certainly
> totally counterproductive!
>
> Even if the idea behind Pulseaudio is interesting, it's implementation
> is far from perfect (and I am polite here....) I have the impression
> to be back in the old times where we had to struggle with
> arts....*shudder*
>
> I strongly suggest to make Pulseaudio an optional installation for
> Kubuntu in Karmic. It is a serious hindrance to the KDE experience,
> and I do not speak only about Amarok. Please, take advice from the KDE
> people on what should be a default sound installation before deciding
> for a Pulseaudio+Gstreamer couple to be default. Of course if
> Gstreamer and Pulseaudio are both ready and fixed to work correctly
> with Phonon and the KDE applications, no problem, but so far it's not
> the case.
>
>
> Regards, Myriam.
>
>   
Pulseaudio is not installed by default in Jaunty, for many of the
reasons you have stated. Not sure where you got the impression that it
is from.

Terence Simpson