Pulse audio

Peteris Krisjanis pecisk at gmail.com
Sat Oct 10 19:16:39 UTC 2009


2009/10/9 Mario Vukelic <mario.vukelic at dantian.org>:
> On Fri, 2009-10-09 at 14:50 +0200, Vincenzo Ciancia wrote:
>> Do you mean that I have a possibly remote possibility of convincing the
>> ubuntu developers to ship pidgin instead of empathy? Do I need to write
>> a scientific paper on that, or is it possible that someone actually does
>> an unbiased comparison by themselves?
>
> Speaking as a non-developer, I would say yes, at the appropriate time.
> Even I know that planned changes are tracked at Launchpad:
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/
>
> I would think that thoughtful input would have had an effect:
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic?searchtext=pidgin
>
> Regarding Pidgin, please note that AFAIK it of course won't be
> uninstalled when upgrading. It remains a first-class citizen in "main",
> and you are welcome to install it in new installations, same as with all
> kinds of other applications. E.g., I always install and use a number of
> other video players for different purposes, but it's still very possible
> to understand the default choice of Totem, even if it misses a number of
> features for some of my tastes.

First of all, why would they have to do that (t.i. change back to
Pidgin as default)?

I think change was discussed very extensively, Empathy had been tested
for two years by GNOME devs before it was accepted as official module.
In result Empathy grow stronger, better and features richer. in this
time, Pidgin, while being overwhelmingly popular, have resisted
integration requests and stagnated feature-wise. In result, I think it
was natural to choose Empathy over Pidgin. Yes, Pidgin users doing
fresh install have to install it from repos using Ubuntu Software
Center. But with current ease of using it, it is a non-issue.

>> No, no, I can't agree. I like new software but there must be a measure.
>> Pulseaudio in the end could be easily disabled in hardy, but e.g.
>> empathy can not make sense, there are no strong reasons to use it,
>> except that it is "a gnome thing" but also pidgin is.

Sorry, I can't agree more either. You don't even offer your reasoning
why there is no strong reasons. For me, integrity, visual style, etc.
makes it much better and welcome in Ubuntu desktop than Pidgin. And it
has been a class example why we do evaluate apps and why they are
given second chance if they improve as Empathy did.

As for a topic -  I have criticized PulseAudio as being very bloating
edge and therefore not suitable for default desktop. However, again,
devs have answered criticism with better code, inegration and bug
fixes. Yes, there are issues, and inclusion of it felt very early and
sure did lot of damage on Ubuntu presence. However, I start to feel
that it was worth it, because in 2.28 PA starts to show it's true
colors and so far I really like what I see.

Whatever PA should have lot of integration with rest of the desktop I
don't know. ALSA purists still should have possibility to run Ubuntu.
However, for majority of users PA is right way forward.

Cheers,
Peter




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