[Bug 198453] Re: Default ALSA device must use PulseAudio, otherwise ALSA applications may fail

[sklp]

Well, I think it's *VERY* odd that this bug made it into Hardy(an LTS
release)...

The steps I usually make to fix (on my hardy installs) is just:
* install libasound2-plugins
* set pulse to default alsa device
* install flash player 10(which works with pulse)
* if some apps refuses to work, make some form of workaround for them:
only problem i've had is really wine, but havent tried that many programs
however, wine seems to work just fine with its OSS output plugin combined with padsp

Although I had to move from 64bit ubuntu to 32 bit ubuntu on one of my
machines to make this work (since libasound2-plugins and padsp
apparently does not exist as lib32* versions yet), which wasnt that fun
:(

First of all what should be done in Ubuntu about this (IMO):
1. Either a) move pulse plugin from libasound2-plugins to libasound2 package (and make sure it is in lib32asound2 as well
             b) ship libasound2-plugins by default as well as ship a new lib32asound2-plugins
2. set pulse to default alsa device
3. An idea to make things seem like less of a hack than they are: configure pulseaudio daemon to NEVER release the sound card. Would fix the issues with different programs gaining exclusive access to the sound card etc (confusing errors; it would IMO in these cases be better if the sound of that specific program just didnt work at all. The user would then have to use some kind of workaround (for instance oss output+padsp ) until the program in question was fixed ( instead of getting strange errors like other programs audio being broken, only the broken program would get non-working audio)

also I'm hoping that if this is not fixed in time, that you (ubuntu
devs) will not hesitate to go back to dmix like in gutsy ( although I
can't really see why )

Also I don't really se why Kubuntu/Xubuntu couldn't use PulseAudio as
well. When used as default alsa output/input, it mainly improves over
dmix, by for instance allowing per-application volume control, network
transparency, etc

just my 2 cents..

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Default ALSA device must use PulseAudio, otherwise ALSA applications may fail
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/198453
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