Pulse audio

Daniel Chen seven.steps at gmail.com
Thu Oct 8 03:32:21 UTC 2009


On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 10:28 PM, Null Ack <nullack at gmail.com> wrote:
> I dont think the ordinary user cares about PulseAudio or other
> internal components to their desktops. They just want audio to work.

Definitely agreed.

> 1. Not delivering reliable audio experiences in production releases of Ubuntu

Certainly, the Ubuntu development team welcomes contributions. The
most visible and impacting contributions for Ubuntu audio come in the
form of source code changes.

Granted, fixing things upstream is generally smiled upon more so than
focusing on a particular distribution. In the case of stellar Ubuntu
audio bugs, perhaps contributing more than "just testing" is way
forward?

> 2. A breakdown in the development process where my bug reports and
> others bug reports remain unresolved, and largely unanswered, except
> for bug spam messages like "I have this too" and "I think this might
> be related to buy XYZ".

The breakdown can be due to prioritizing. Is your bug the most
impacting of all PulseAudio bugs? It's straightforward to say that my
bug is truly important to me, but it's often less admissible that the
bug only affects a given portion of users who are technically savvy
and know of workarounds.

I've presented numerous times that fixing the (Ubuntu) Linux audio
mess will take a while. This example is certainly not an
instant-gratification one.

In my mind, the ramp-up is also due to the fact that very few people
within the community truly understand the devastating cascade effect
of changes to any part of the audio stack.

> time with testing, but I find the audio bugs go on without resolution
> from previous cycle experiences. When I try to use it in applications,
> say warzone2100 I find the sound a garbled inaudible mess. Since bug
> reports dont seem to be effective, I've tried to get discussion going
> on if I could take the problems upstream or if they were Ubuntu
> specific problems but that was also left unanswered.

How can you assist in resolving the problems? Firstly, try to pinpoint
where in the audio stack the breakage is occurring. Secondly,
understand that your workaround is just a workaround and that it may
well break numerous other hardware. Thirdly, test your workaround on
as many hardware as you can.

> Other bugs in other internal components are actively resolved during
> the dev cycle so I think the issues are about a lack of capability in
> the audio space for Ubuntu.

Absolutely. One person volunteering and one person full-time makes for
much pain. We all welcome your contributions (including your testing).
Please take advantage of the mentoring offered (i.e., consider this an
explicit offer for mentoring).

-Dan




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