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A comment on The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop. Parent comment

Re:The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop by jsnell on Saturday June 11, 2011 @01:58PM (#2644419)
I think all of the big selling points of PulseAudio had similar tragic flaws. Either they were totally useless even conceptually (network transparent audio? really?) or conceptually at least so-so, but implemented so badly that they were also practically useless. My favorite example of the latter was the per-application volume control (which I've never wanted, but maybe somebody does) which pretty much ended up with the system volume occasionally getting set to the maximum value.
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Re:The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop by mgkimsal on Saturday June 11, 2011 @03:03PM (#2644549)
What's so odd about this is that I have this on my macbook now but in a much more straightforward way. Each application running that outputs sound has a volume control embedded in it (itunes, vlc, flash video in youtube, etc). I go to each one and adjust the volume. Not that hard. I realize PA was trying to centralize and offer more, but it's a solution looking for a problem in most cases.

And I tried out 'airfoil' the other day (I think that was the name) that let me push out audio from different apps on my mac to 'foil speakers'? - basically other software running to capture and playback that audio. I can essentially run and manage just the audio portion of itunes on mac 1 from software on mac 2. And it 'just worked' (to reclaim the ubuntu mantra). Ahh - here: http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/

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Re:The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop by bwat47 on Saturday June 11, 2011 @03:49PM (#2644680)
Per application volume is the feature of PA most people wanted. Windows 7 has this and it works great. In PA however... not so much. Linux does need something like pulseaudio, but pulseaudio does indeed suck :(
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Re:The Linux desktop experience is killing Linux on the desktop by superppl on Saturday June 11, 2011 @07:38PM (#2645171)
PulseAudio has been one of those love/hate things. Per application audio is great when you want to mute an application that you can't mute otherwise (like a flash application for school simply won't shut up).

I hate how it keeps touching the volume level for the system/hardware.

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