Additionally Alan Cox weights in on how *not* to do changes, using GNOME 3 as an example.This is an excerpt from ELCE 2011 kernel development panel with Linu...
I use Pipewire now but Pulseaudio is (and has been for years) better than both the Windows and Mac audio stack. It may have been bad once (yes, I remember the days of having to start Wine with some pulse env var so the audio doesn’t crackle) but nowadays it doesn’t deserve the level of hate it still gets.
It would have been fine if it wasn’t forced. “We are the audio stack everyone should use” but when it doesn’t work then it’s an ALSA bug and alsa ppl should take the blame (even when it works fine with full alsa, like my audio card). And it was designed more like a networking stack then an audio stack.
Sure it was necessary at the time (so that hdmi, and later bluetooth, would work transparently), but the “i know best” attitude hurt its execution.
SystemD on the other hand brought nothing of value. Did way more harm then good.
when it doesn’t work then it’s an ALSA bug and alsa ppl should take the blame (even when it works fine with full alsa, like my audio card).
Well, yeah. PA used ALSA APIs that most applications didn’t, which exposed bugs in little-used, little-tested driver code. Nothing implausible about that.
The standard AC97 and USB audio drivers worked fine—I know they did because that’s what I was using with PA at the time—but the drivers for more esoteric audio hardware had yet to be debugged, and Lennart couldn’t feasibly test and fix all of them by himself because he didn’t have the hardware. Others in the community did, and together they fixed the bugs and eventually got PA working smoothly on everything.
And it was designed more like a networking stack then an audio stack.
Of course. PA was specifically designed to be network transparent, same as the X11 protocol it was typically used with.
Sure it was necessary at the time (so that hdmi, and later bluetooth, would work transparently), but the “i know best” attitude hurt its execution.
Ah, but he was correct. He did, in fact, know best. Lennart Poettering brought an end to the clusterf*** that was Linux audio pre-PA. No one else solved the problem until he came along and said “no more,” and I must say I’m appalled at the ingratitude of his detractors.
SystemD on the other hand brought nothing of value. Did way more harm then good.
Nonsense! Before systemd, startup took forever, shutdown took forever, and it was a crapshoot whether shutdown would succeed or hang. Systemd hasn’t fully solved this problem, but it’s a lot better than what I had to live with in the bad old days.
Also, systemd brings with it a logging system with integrity checking, structured data, and database-like querying. Huge improvement over BSD syslog.
Also also, systemd has proper process supervision, services can depend on devices, unit/global start/stop timeouts, networkd, user session tracking and cleanup, user services, easy-to-use sandboxing, and on and on and on. There’s all kinds of useful goodies in there.
Quit your bullshit, nothing was ever forced on you. This is Linux, free software and all that, if you’re not happy then use a systemd-less distro and stop complaining about meaningless points. SystemD works very well for me (and the vast majority of the Linux community) and is very easy to use and understand
Udev was changed to depend on systemd. No good reason for it. So it practically was forced. You can lie all you want, it won’t change reality. SystemD was hyped up by comparing it with the worst implementation of sysV, at a time when no major distro other then fedora even used sysV. And that is not even the tip of the pile of dishonesty.
Just by saying that it is no better then alternatives of the time will get ignorant people like you to yell. That is how strong the hype was around it. How can you even talk about free software when RH can take a core component and make it hard dependant on whatever they want. Just like bluetooth has a hard dependency on PA.
I’m also free to say something sucks, just like you are free to lick their balls.
I use Pipewire now but Pulseaudio is (and has been for years) better than both the Windows and Mac audio stack. It may have been bad once (yes, I remember the days of having to start Wine with some pulse env var so the audio doesn’t crackle) but nowadays it doesn’t deserve the level of hate it still gets.
It would have been fine if it wasn’t forced. “We are the audio stack everyone should use” but when it doesn’t work then it’s an ALSA bug and alsa ppl should take the blame (even when it works fine with full alsa, like my audio card). And it was designed more like a networking stack then an audio stack.
Sure it was necessary at the time (so that hdmi, and later bluetooth, would work transparently), but the “i know best” attitude hurt its execution.
SystemD on the other hand brought nothing of value. Did way more harm then good.
Well, yeah. PA used ALSA APIs that most applications didn’t, which exposed bugs in little-used, little-tested driver code. Nothing implausible about that.
The standard AC97 and USB audio drivers worked fine—I know they did because that’s what I was using with PA at the time—but the drivers for more esoteric audio hardware had yet to be debugged, and Lennart couldn’t feasibly test and fix all of them by himself because he didn’t have the hardware. Others in the community did, and together they fixed the bugs and eventually got PA working smoothly on everything.
Of course. PA was specifically designed to be network transparent, same as the X11 protocol it was typically used with.
Ah, but he was correct. He did, in fact, know best. Lennart Poettering brought an end to the clusterf*** that was Linux audio pre-PA. No one else solved the problem until he came along and said “no more,” and I must say I’m appalled at the ingratitude of his detractors.
Nonsense! Before systemd, startup took forever, shutdown took forever, and it was a crapshoot whether shutdown would succeed or hang. Systemd hasn’t fully solved this problem, but it’s a lot better than what I had to live with in the bad old days.
Also, systemd brings with it a logging system with integrity checking, structured data, and database-like querying. Huge improvement over BSD syslog.
Also also, systemd has proper process supervision, services can depend on devices, unit/global start/stop timeouts, networkd, user session tracking and cleanup, user services, easy-to-use sandboxing, and on and on and on. There’s all kinds of useful goodies in there.
Quit your bullshit, nothing was ever forced on you. This is Linux, free software and all that, if you’re not happy then use a systemd-less distro and stop complaining about meaningless points. SystemD works very well for me (and the vast majority of the Linux community) and is very easy to use and understand
Udev was changed to depend on systemd. No good reason for it. So it practically was forced. You can lie all you want, it won’t change reality. SystemD was hyped up by comparing it with the worst implementation of sysV, at a time when no major distro other then fedora even used sysV. And that is not even the tip of the pile of dishonesty.
Just by saying that it is no better then alternatives of the time will get ignorant people like you to yell. That is how strong the hype was around it. How can you even talk about free software when RH can take a core component and make it hard dependant on whatever they want. Just like bluetooth has a hard dependency on PA. I’m also free to say something sucks, just like you are free to lick their balls.