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

Nio Wiklund nio.wiklund at gmail.com
Thu Mar 23 05:32:25 UTC 2017


+1

Best regards
Nio

Den 2017-03-22 kl. 22:21, skrev 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
>>
>
>




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