Please, Ubuntu, do not embarrass me again!

[Tom H]

On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 10:03 AM, Chan Chung Hang Christopher
<christopher.chan at bradbury.edu.hk> wrote:
>
>> I can't begin to understand why anyone would want to use pulseaudio on
>> OSX given how many problems it creates on Linux and how smooth the
>> audio experience is on a Mac (or even on Windows). I don't know what
>> is really meant by "match the sound system of Solaris and Mac OS X"
>> but it sounds like torture to me.
>
> pulseaudio gives us somewhat equivalent capabilities that the sound
> systems of Solaris and Mac OS X provide. Like multiple apps sending
> their output to the sound system simultaneously. Direct alsa access does
> not allow that.

I had somehow understood "match..." to mean "install pulse audio and
use the same settings"; perhaps not...


>> I wish that Linux developers would really put some effort to make
>> audio work out-of-the-box, to prevent all the "I have no audio" posts
>> on user lists. One of the reasons that I am avoiding helping family
>> and friends upgrade to the latest Ubuntu/Fedora versions is that I
>> don't want to waste time, possibly, on fixing the audio. :(
>
> The problem is that there are few if any who are employed to focus on
> the desktop and those who volunteer to make the desktop experience
> better have to contend with big egos and politics like Con Kolivas who
> had his scheduler first villified by Ingo Molnar only for something
> similar from Ingo to be later implemented and made part of the kernel.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Con_Kolivas
>
> Ingo 'inspired' it says. Ingo did not even credit Con when he first
> unveiled his fancy new CFS to replace his then incumbent scheduler.

I remember following the Colivas story and reading his "goodbye" post
and then wondering in what way the Molnar scheduler was different
enough to be considered for inclusion, except that he was an
"insider".


>> The lead developer of pulseaudio's patest project is to write an
>> replacement for the sysinit system (an upstart replacement). He was
>> also the lead developer for avahi.
>>
>> There were two "fun" comments to his systemd announcement:
>>
>> 1. You broke networking, then sound, and now want to break boot.
>>
>> 2. Fix pulseaudio before you create a new sysinit.
>>
>> Mean but :)
>
> Mentality of doing something new but never perfecting or not bothering
> to pay attention to detail huh? Not enough motivation in certain areas
> it would seem.

It's a natural attitude. The developers want to move on to more
"interesting, challenging, sexy" projects. We still have a couple of
Sol 2.5.1 boxes because no one wants to upgrade/migrate the code that
is running on them in spite of the what must be the outrageous price
that Sun must be charging us for platinum, post-EOL support.