Re:Why Did ArchLinux Embrace Systemd? (2016)
by michaelmrose on Monday October 21, 2019 @02:05PM
(#21315307)
I've been using Linux on the desktop since 2003. Linux audio support started out as a shit show that you could deal with tolerably well by buying supported sound cards. Pulseaudio seemed to simplify things until it didn't actually work. Until it inexplicably stopped working at intervals until load was such that it ended up out of sync by just a little bit etc. It simultaneously had a degree of complexity and configurability that suggested that maybe just maybe if you fiddled with a knob it would actually work until it didn't again.
If it just solidly didn't work at all it would have been annoying but this sort of kind of but never really consistently almost working is what makes you want to physically throw your computer through the nearest window.
Now it seems to work acceptably well save for the fact that guis still regularly have garbage interfaces and one weird stupid configuration.
Pulse by default remembers which device a particular app was outputting sound so you can switch the default device to headphones while say your browser isn't actually outputting sound via any tab and then you will open a sound producing tab and it "remembers" it was using the speakers and blares at full volume at 2AM. Thanks pulse.
This is configurable but who is going to figure that out?
I believe the relevant line is thus where the relevant part is restore_device=false
Regarding sound configuration virtually nobody wants different programs to output to different sound producing devices. This might be an important use case for some users but if you have 5 sound producing apps the process of switching from speakers to headphones should not be to move each one with 3 clicks per move. I almost exclusively perform 3 operations I turn the sound up or down and switch to and from headphones whereupon I expect everything including newly created streams to end up on the new device. The first 2 have dedicated buttons the third does not so I had to make it so.
Absent a dedicated button fewer steps would be nice last I looked a few years ago it was complicated in all environments I tried. Having the right answer to get a pleasant environment be write a shell script and fiddle with config files is probably not optimal.
If it just solidly didn't work at all it would have been annoying but this sort of kind of but never really consistently almost working is what makes you want to physically throw your computer through the nearest window.
Now it seems to work acceptably well save for the fact that guis still regularly have garbage interfaces and one weird stupid configuration.
Pulse by default remembers which device a particular app was outputting sound so you can switch the default device to headphones while say your browser isn't actually outputting sound via any tab and then you will open a sound producing tab and it "remembers" it was using the speakers and blares at full volume at 2AM. Thanks pulse.
This is configurable but who is going to figure that out?
I believe the relevant line is thus where the relevant part is restore_device=false
in /etc/pulse/default.paRegarding sound configuration virtually nobody wants different programs to output to different sound producing devices. This might be an important use case for some users but if you have 5 sound producing apps the process of switching from speakers to headphones should not be to move each one with 3 clicks per move. I almost exclusively perform 3 operations I turn the sound up or down and switch to and from headphones whereupon I expect everything including newly created streams to end up on the new device. The first 2 have dedicated buttons the third does not so I had to make it so.
Absent a dedicated button fewer steps would be nice last I looked a few years ago it was complicated in all environments I tried. Having the right answer to get a pleasant environment be write a shell script and fiddle with config files is probably not optimal.