Matt Bottrell posted about the sad state of audio on linux. Now - I can't even pretend to understand all the whys and wherefores, and have none of the necessary skills to fix it, let alone post constructive criticism about where to look at sorting out the issues - but I can certainly agree it's broken. Perhaps I can add a simple voice of frustration from a long time linux user? And also say that I will cheer heartily from the sidelines if some solution can be found for this mess, and buy beverages for the hackers responsible should I bump into them at linux.conf.au next year in Wellington, NZ
My ubuntu desktop suffers from strange audio symptoms, sometimes stopping pulseaudio does the trick, sometimes not. Sometimes a reboot is all I can do to stop the machine hissing after some failed attempt to 'do' audio. Sometimes audio will work in one app, but not in another. It's beyond my knowledge how to even start troubleshooting and documenting the problem.
We really need this to 'just work'. If I wasn't the passionate advocate of software freedom that I am, I could consider going back to MacOS (if only they supported OGG!) If I needed audio regularly for professional stuff I couldn't put up with the situation - so I wonder how much this is holding others back?
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Thanks for the comments everyone.
Yeah - sorry about that. But keep in mind this wasn't a bug report, it was a rant agreeing with Matt that there's a problem. A problem I am periodically frustrated by, but not enough to have done something about. Until I read Matt's post, which made me realise this 'minor' problem for me, is a major problem for others. But, that said, thanks for the suggestion to look at
Next time I experience audio issues I'll try to look harder at what's going on and gather more useful information in order to submit a report. I'm not running Jaunty yet - so perhaps this should wait until I've upgraded. It might all be fine! :)
It may not be a regression Marco - it seems the pulseaudio team are actively engaged in following this rabbit down the hole, given Daniel's response to both mine and Matt's posts. This is the free software community in action. As is the FOMS initiative Silvia has been working on in recent years. I guess our challenge is how can we add our voices in a constructive way? What do the developers need from us to help them make it better?!
No actually I haven't. As I responded on identi.ca to crimsun It is "hard to pinpoint what the problem is when I'm doing something else & can't stop to analyse it, let alone submit a good bug report". I'll work harder and be a better user.
Re: Linux Audio - time for serious attention
I concur - Linux audio is a real mess. In the years I've maintained the stack in Ubuntu, things have become more complicated. Thankfully, PulseAudio is pushing the right buttons. It has, as Matt B (and I and numerous others have) mentioned, exposed serious shortcomings in both hardware and in Linux - all the way up the stack, really. We're fixing those bugs, and while I don't anticipate the flood of bug reports pertaining to "broken sound"/"no sound"/other trivially useless (vague - think: "doctor, my leg hurts, now [tell me how to] fix it!") descriptions to be stemmed, I do imagine we'll reach a point where it's easier to diagnose problems on your own instead of relying on magic runes. In fact, I have sessions lined up at the Ubuntu Developers Summit in Barcelona at the end of May to discuss and press forward on that front.
Your symptoms, as per ordinary bug reports, don't contain sufficient detail to be useful for us. In Jaunty, please use `ubuntu-bug pulseaudio' for starters, and we'll request additional information for your specific issue(s).
How much is broken audio holding me back? Far too much!
Hey Kattekrab,
A most appropriate post!
In recent kernel revisions and with the widespread use of pulse I've experienced multiple layers of regression on various hardware, and had to put up with different code maintainers blame each other for the issue.
Sound is broken, and in great need of fixing.
While I can understand and even admire the intentions of pulse audio, in reality it's a mess, more broken than ALSA or OSS ever was.
So we've determined that it's broken, that box is ticked. What interests me much more is where do we go from here? How will this regression be fixed?
If more voices are required to express the brokenness of the current arrangement, I join my "Aye" to the yours and others.
Cheers
Bug report?
Have you reported a bug about it in Launchpad (you mentioned Ubuntu)? If so, link?
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