From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ricardo Wurmus Subject: Re: PulseAudio Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2016 22:43:24 +0100 Message-ID: <87egclv9tv.fsf@elephly.net> References: <8737u160jz.fsf@gnu.org> <87lh6ty3wb.fsf@dustycloud.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:57333) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1aTG4N-0001gS-Pi for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 09 Feb 2016 16:43:36 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1aTG4M-0000Uk-SA for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 09 Feb 2016 16:43:35 -0500 In-reply-to: <87lh6ty3wb.fsf@dustycloud.org> List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Christopher Allan Webber Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org Christopher Allan Webber writes: > Ludovic Courtès writes: > >> Leo Famulari skribis: >> >>> I guess the factors are: >>> 1) Does GuixSD have a default audio setup that we should target? If >>> GuixSD uses PulseAudio, then I think it would be good for eSpeak to be >>> integrated into that sytem. >>> 2) Does this package, which launches PulseAudio, work for anyone on a >>> foreign distro? >> >> It’s not written anywhere, but I think most of our audio packages target >> PulseAudio (that’s what I use on GuixSD.) I’m in favor of consistently >> using it, and it would probably be best to write it down in the manual. >> >> Thoughts? >> >> Ludo’. > > I'd really like it if we just agreed that in general, yeah, we want > Pulseaudio support. I agree with Pulseaudio *support*, but this does not mean that we’d have to link all applications that have an optional Pulseaudio backend with the Pulseaudio libraries, does it? Since I’m not using Pulseaudio I cannot vouch for this to work, but ALSA can be configured to use redirect audio streams to Pulseaudio (if it’s running). I know of no application that offers a Pulseaudio backend but cannot use ALSA directly. This redirection from ALSA to Pulseaudio could be implemented as an etc-service, providing the required configuration file. My experience with Pulseaudio was very different (and still is if I count support requests from friends), but maybe that’s just because I don’t *always* want Pulseaudio. I found it difficult to reliably disable/suspend Pulseaudio whenever I wanted to do audio work (= involving JACK). It often just got in the way. On other machines where I didn’t use JACK regularly Pulseaudio was acceptable, I guess. It makes me shed a salty tear that something so complicated and layered as Pulseaudio was necessary to tame the mess in the Linux [sic] audio world :-/ ~~ Ricardo