[lubuntu-devel] Needs feedback: Firefox and ALSA on Lubuntu 16.04 LTS

[Henk Terhell]

Perhaps a possibility to guide users how they can install pulseaudio and 
pavucontrol if they prefer to continue using firefox?

Henk

Op 2017-03-22 om 18:05 schreef Simon Quigley:
> Hello,
>
> You may be aware of a major bug[1] we have in Lubuntu that surfaced after
> Firefox 52 was released into xenial-updates. Upstream Firefox no longer supports
> the ALSA audio framework, which is what Lubuntu 16.04 uses as it's primary audio
> framework. This is a major regression that needs to be fixed as soon as
> possible. People depend on Lubuntu 16.04 LTS to be a stable release that has
> long term support, and that won't break their audio in their web browser after
> an update.
>
> While I'm unsure there was anything that could have been done to prevent this
> (practically, Firefox is a large package...), as I don't know upstream made this
> change clear, it is something that needs to be fixed. But, since this is a
> stable, LTS release, any change we do at this point needs to be carefully
> thought out. Here are some options that we could explore:
>
>   1) Re-enable ALSA in Ubuntu's Firefox package, and find somebody to maintain
> it. This would be a large amount of work because it's essentially giving us a
> lot of work maintaining something that only Lubuntu 16.04 users will use. I
> don't think we should take this route.
>
>   2) Change the audio framework in Lubuntu 16.04 to use Pulseaudio instead. This
> would be a good amount of work guarding against any regression, and it would
> have to be a seamless migration. This would take a lot of work, but I think it's
> doable. I vote this solution.
>
>   3) Switch off of Firefox in Lubuntu 16.04 altogether. This would probably make
> many users angry, as they will have to migrate everything off of Firefox to get
> working audio, but it would be the easiest solution for us, the maintainers.
>
> Whatever solution we take, this will break a good amount of rules we have in
> place regarding not introducing new things into stable releases. But unless we
> can somehow reverse the version of Firefox in xenial-updates (which is also
> doable but that would take some work as well), we have to do something.
>
> Thoughts from anyone?
>
> [1] https://pad.lv/1671273
>