PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

djselbeck · 2010-02-11 22:59:24

Hello,

I use archlinux now for a year. And I really need to use pulseaudio. For example to play Youtube Videos on my netbook with sound over my stereo connected to my desktop pc. And other things like changing the samplerate without terminating running audiostreams. Today I updated KDE and thought that kde 4.4 should have Pulseaudio support. But what must I see? Pulseaudio is disabled in default phonon PKGBUILD. But why? It is fully optional and automatically falls back to alsa if pulseaudio is not availible. So there shouldn't be disadvantages to ALSA only users. Another package with this behaviour is XBMC. It has pulseaudio support also fully optional. If there is no Pulseaudio it uses alsa instead. But why do I need to recompile more and more packages by hand only to have pulseaudio support. It is completly unneccesary.

I think there is some kind of boycott to pulseaudio by archlinux package maintainers?
All in all I really love the archlinux philosophy but this is something I really don't understand.

Greets

Pierre · 2010-02-11 23:04:39

Nice theory, but the truth is more simple: no package maintainer is interested in putting pulseaudio into [extra]. Sure, pulseaudio is in community, but application like KDE cannot depend on community packages.

djselbeck · 2010-02-11 23:27:46

Well, this suckes

tavianator · 2010-02-11 23:32:19

Well, recompile it yourself with pulse support? I don't imagine it's hard, especially since you noticed where it was disabled.

denisfalqueto · 2010-02-11 23:52:26

I'm using Kdemod and it has pulseaudio enabled... Maybe you want to give a try.

Anonymo · 2010-02-11 23:55:40

Use OSS4
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Open_Sound_System

djselbeck · 2010-02-12 00:41:52

OSS is no alternative for me. Well what sucks about recompiling yourself? That it is to time cosuming to recompile after every update of certain packages. Especially on a netbook with an atom processor.

damjan · 2010-02-12 00:45:56

Pierre wrote:

Nice theory, but the truth is more simple: no package maintainer is interested in putting pulseaudio into [extra]. Sure, pulseaudio is in community, but application like KDE cannot depend on community packages.

Is it ok to optdepend on stuff in community?

ngoonee · 2010-02-12 05:45:34

If you're using KDE you may want to try out KDEmod. Its a big re-download, but stuff like this they try to do.

Eventually pulseaudio comes to [extra], but no dev wants to take it up as yet. They're all over-worked as it is.

timong · 2010-02-12 13:16:56

I don't want to hijack the thread, but is PulseAudio capable to wrap the ALSA and Alsa emulated-OSS part? I mean if I use pulseaudio will the applications that use ALSA/OSS work out of the box and be wrapped by pulse audio? I'm interested in this one, because I have a bluetooth headset that is not working with some 32-bit applications (using lib32 alsa bluetooth plugin), -- if that way I can connect the headset to PulseAudio probably wrapping the mixing part and that way those 32-bit apps could work with the alsa/oss part without directly requiring the alsa-bluetooth SO, and probably the PulseAudio bluetooth could work. What do you think?

Well, I'll try that when i get home and find out.

flamelab · 2010-02-12 13:34:24

I think the best thing the devs did was to disable Pulseaudio support. It's still a pain. When I had KDE 4.4 from here http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=76245 ProgDan had (by mistake, I don't blame him, he did a great job with KDE alphas/betas) Pulseaudio enabled. Without Pulseaudio INSTALLED, KDE had problem. No audio--> I had to configure the KDE audio system to use Pulseaudio.

So much trouble for nothing.

R00KIE · 2010-02-12 15:49:25

@flamelab
It seems the problem is mostly with kde.

I'm using xfce and stuff worked either with OSSv4, just alsa or alsa + pulse (which is what I have now).
But as kde wants do do all be all and includes its own mixer and whatnot things are going to break is you want to try something different. Mind you that I'm not saying that having everything integrated and working well is a bad thing (when things actually work well together, which may not happen when you start picking the best app for each purpose, read mixing kde and non kde apps), it's just that it's a pain in the neck if you plan to use something different.

@timong
It is possible to wrap alsa only apps to output through pulse with an alsa plugin you just need to configure it in asound.conf. As for oss I haven't tried and don't want to, alsa's emulation of oss is not that good I believe.

Mr.Elendig · 2010-02-12 18:43:17

My take on this is: "If you don't like how the packager built the package, do it yourself"
This is why abs exists, and one of the things that makes arch less painfull than most of the other distroes out there.

Btw, if you also have a faster desktop box, you could build the package there and simply copy it over to the netbook, and install it there.

ngoonee · 2010-02-13 08:54:04

timong wrote:

I don't want to hijack the thread, but is PulseAudio capable to wrap the ALSA and Alsa emulated-OSS part? I mean if I use pulseaudio will the applications that use ALSA/OSS work out of the box and be wrapped by pulse audio? I'm interested in this one, because I have a bluetooth headset that is not working with some 32-bit applications (using lib32 alsa bluetooth plugin), -- if that way I can connect the headset to PulseAudio probably wrapping the mixing part and that way those 32-bit apps could work with the alsa/oss part without directly requiring the alsa-bluetooth SO, and probably the PulseAudio bluetooth could work. What do you think?
Well, I'll try that when i get home and find out.

Yes, it is. Just edit your .asoundrc to point to the pulseaudio server. The pulseaudio wiki maintains a list of apps which still don't work using that (its not empty, but its a small list, Audacity being the biggest problem currently I think).

timong · 2010-02-13 11:19:02

Thanks ROOKIE and ngoonee!

I was able to find the comfortable solution to all my apps with pulseaudio! Bluetooth headset is nicely used by the wrapping and I can transparently use ALSA with it. Even NWN1 and Eschalon Book I and Skype (microphone of the notebook is still used) is working through the headset. Reading the arch wiki page about PulseAudio and installing/configuring it based on the wiki, plus fetching lib32-alsa-plugins makes it work with 32-bit apps. (For Neverwinter I had to specify DSP for the SDL_AUDIODRIVER and use aoss32. For Eschalon Book I which is OSS only I had to use aoss32 again, and as expected it puts stream through the pulseaudio ALSA plugin, thus pulseaudio can redirect it to my bluetooth headset if connected. And in the end, I only have to disconnet the headset to make use of the wired earphones or built in speakers.) I wasn't a big friend of PulseAudio before, but now I have found a good use for it. Kudos!

Last edited by timong (2010-02-13 11:21:03)

ngoonee · 2010-02-13 15:07:36

@timong, allow me to summarize your post.

I read the arch wiki page about PulseAudio and everything works A-OK!

Tends to work out that way, honestly.

raf_kig · 2010-02-13 20:13:29

Mr.Elendig wrote:

This is why abs exists, and one of the things that makes arch less painfull than most of the other distroes out there.

Yeah exactly, arch really stands out here. It's a feature that other distros like ubuntu or debian just can't deliver.
Oh wait.

djselbeck · 2010-02-13 20:41:50

Yeah I can do this in fedora too. Just yumdownloader --source packagename and then rpmbuild. But this not the point .

ngoonee · 2010-02-13 21:56:46

raf_kig wrote:

Mr.Elendig wrote:
This is why abs exists, and one of the things that makes arch less painfull than most of the other distroes out there.
Yeah exactly, arch really stands out here. It's a feature that other distros like ubuntu or debian just can't deliver.
Oh wait.

IMHO, Arch PKGBUILDs are much easier to understand...

habbe · 2010-02-14 22:10:27

Also MPD does not understand pulseaudio (nor jack) out of the box, which is irritating and pointless IMO.

venky80 · 2010-02-14 22:13:34

very informative pulseaudio post http://colin.guthr.ie/2010/02/this-is-t … e-to-hell/

ngoonee · 2010-02-15 05:17:10

habbe wrote:

Also MPD does not understand pulseaudio (nor jack) out of the box, which is irritating and pointless IMO.

If you compile MPD with pulse/jack support in a binary-distribution like Arch, you FORCE everyone who uses MPD to have both pulse and jack installed. Most of whom would not want that.

R00KIE · 2010-02-15 18:17:58

ngoonee wrote:

habbe wrote:
Also MPD does not understand pulseaudio (nor jack) out of the box, which is irritating and pointless IMO.
If you compile MPD with pulse/jack support in a binary-distribution like Arch, you FORCE everyone who uses MPD to have both pulse and jack installed. Most of whom would not want that.

Thats a pain not having support for something but it's also a pain to have to install things you will never need, programs should be able to try all supported outputs and use one that works in case the default/selected one is not found. Vlc does it but mplayer explodes if it can't find jack (which I don't use), the same happens if it can't find pulse.

Edit:
After some testing I agree with you

Last edited by R00KIE (2010-02-15 20:03:14)

habbe · 2010-02-15 22:44:19

ngoonee wrote:

habbe wrote:
Also MPD does not understand pulseaudio (nor jack) out of the box, which is irritating and pointless IMO.
If you compile MPD with pulse/jack support in a binary-distribution like Arch, you FORCE everyone who uses MPD to have both pulse and jack installed. Most of whom would not want that.

I don't understand how it is FORCED. That just seems stupid coding, but I'm not an expert.

We really need a common solution for audio, this is just delaying things.

GogglesGuy · 2010-02-15 23:20:31

ngoonee wrote:

habbe wrote:
Also MPD does not understand pulseaudio (nor jack) out of the box, which is irritating and pointless IMO.
If you compile MPD with pulse/jack support in a binary-distribution like Arch, you FORCE everyone who uses MPD to have both pulse and jack installed. Most of whom would not want that.

You can make that argument for any external dependency that mpd requires.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-02-11 22:59:24

PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#2 2010-02-11 23:04:39

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#3 2010-02-11 23:27:46

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#4 2010-02-11 23:32:19

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#5 2010-02-11 23:52:26

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#6 2010-02-11 23:55:40

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#7 2010-02-12 00:41:52

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#8 2010-02-12 00:45:56

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#9 2010-02-12 05:45:34

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#10 2010-02-12 13:16:56

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#11 2010-02-12 13:34:24

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#12 2010-02-12 15:49:25

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#13 2010-02-12 18:43:17

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#14 2010-02-13 08:54:04

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#15 2010-02-13 11:19:02

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#16 2010-02-13 15:07:36

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#17 2010-02-13 20:13:29

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#18 2010-02-13 20:41:50

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#19 2010-02-13 21:56:46

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#20 2010-02-14 22:10:27

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#21 2010-02-14 22:13:34

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#22 2010-02-15 05:17:10

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#23 2010-02-15 18:17:58

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#24 2010-02-15 22:44:19

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

#25 2010-02-15 23:20:31

Re: PULSEAUDIO Boycott?

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