Pulse audio

[Vincenzo Ciancia]

On Wed, 2009-10-07 at 23:32 -0400, Daniel Chen wrote:
> 
> 
> 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?

The real problem that nobody seemed ever to be getting is that when you
introduce huge regressions, then you probably should 1) either not
distribute the software yet 2) or put more energy into bug fixing for
the particular software, or at least have strong, or 3) have convincing
reasons for forcing people to "enjoy" the regressions while they could
as well live happily with the previously used one, or 4) make it easy
for people to try the new solution, and if it fails, revert to the old
one. Ubuntu did not show particular interest in any of the above
policies. Typically, the new software replaces the old one, period. See
e.g. the shiny new IM software that will replace the old one, and karmic
users will love. The only advantage that it should offer is voice and
video calls. I never succeded in having it work for voice/video. And it
is so badly broken in other areas I really wonder how you all can be so
blind.

Asking users to start contributing proves that there is no sufficient
manpower to fix bugs. But perhaps people could live without the new
software and related regressions? Now in the case of pulseaudio, for me,
the benefits are greater than the regressions. I personally can use
skype while watching a flash movie, and that's an innovation in linux.
But are there experimetnal measurements of the impact the introduction
of pulseaudio had in hardy on users? Empirically, I saw that it broke
skype for everybody I knew. 

V.