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Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone

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  Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Kaj Persson <70147persson@telia.com> - 2019-06-04 21:30 +0200
    Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2019-06-04 22:00 +0200
      Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Joe Dennigan <general@jdenn.fastmail.fm> - 2019-06-05 00:10 +0200
        Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Kaj Persson <70147persson@telia.com> - 2019-06-06 00:30 +0200
          Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Michael Lange <klappnase@freenet.de> - 2019-06-06 00:40 +0200
      Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Michael Lange <klappnase@freenet.de> - 2019-06-05 11:30 +0200
        Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2019-06-05 11:40 +0200
          Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Michael Lange <klappnase@freenet.de> - 2019-06-05 12:20 +0200
            Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2019-06-05 14:30 +0200
              Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Greg Wooledge <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org> - 2019-06-05 14:40 +0200
                Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2019-06-05 15:40 +0200
                Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2019-06-05 20:20 +0200
              Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2019-06-05 14:40 +0200
        Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Tixy <tixy@yxit.co.uk> - 2019-06-05 12:00 +0200
    Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Georgi Naplatanov <gosho@oles.biz> - 2019-06-04 22:20 +0200
      Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone humbert.olivier.1@free.fr - 2019-06-04 23:00 +0200
        Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2019-06-05 00:30 +0200
          Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone humbert.olivier.1@free.fr - 2019-06-05 01:30 +0200
            Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2019-06-05 10:20 +0200
      Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone conover@rahul.net (John Conover) - 2019-06-04 23:10 +0200
      Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Tixy <tixy@yxit.co.uk> - 2019-06-05 08:50 +0200
        Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2019-06-05 10:10 +0200
          Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Joe <joe@jretrading.com> - 2019-06-05 10:30 +0200
            Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2019-06-05 20:10 +0200
      Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2019-06-05 10:20 +0200
        Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Greg Wooledge <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org> - 2019-06-05 14:50 +0200
          Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Renato Gallo <renato@aster-lab.com> - 2019-06-05 15:00 +0200
            Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2019-06-05 20:10 +0200
              Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2019-06-05 20:40 +0200
          Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2019-06-05 15:40 +0200
      Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Michael Lange <klappnase@freenet.de> - 2019-06-05 11:30 +0200
        Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2019-06-05 11:40 +0200
          Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Michael Lange <klappnase@freenet.de> - 2019-06-05 12:20 +0200
            Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2019-06-05 12:30 +0200
              Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2019-06-05 14:30 +0200
              Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Michael Lange <klappnase@freenet.de> - 2019-06-05 20:10 +0200
        Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Stephan Seitz <stse+debian@fsing.rootsland.net> - 2019-06-05 12:50 +0200
    Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone Michael Howard <mike@dewberryfields.co.uk> - 2019-06-05 09:10 +0200

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#209615

On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 22:51 +0300, Georgi Naplatanov wrote:
[...]
> If you don't use PulseAudio then only one application can use an ALSA
> device at the same time on your computer. Even some applications
> support
> PulseAudio only.

Like Firefox, that was the reason I relented and installed Pulse Audio
(to listen to online video).

-- 
Tixy

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#209617

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On Wed, Jun 05, 2019 at 07:40:30AM +0100, Tixy wrote:
> On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 22:51 +0300, Georgi Naplatanov wrote:
> [...]
> > If you don't use PulseAudio then only one application can use an ALSA
> > device at the same time on your computer. Even some applications
> > support
> > PulseAudio only.
> 
> Like Firefox, that was the reason I relented and installed Pulse Audio
> (to listen to online video).

See? I'm happy my browser has no sound, at last :-)

Thing is... if you ban pulseaudio, you should know that many "desktop
environments" and other so-called "modern" [1] software rely on it.
So you should know what you're doing or you should be willing to learn
things.

In that case, it can be quite rewarding.

In a nutshell, I'd say: if you want to *just* use your distribution
as a tool that Just Works (TM) and tend to opt for "the defaults",
just use PulseAudio. If you want to tinker and learn (which doesn't
mean that your distro will be useless!), dropping one or two of these
migth be a rewarding avenue.

Thanks to Debian and to all of you hard-working DDs and other Debian
folks for making both avenues possible! [2]

Cheers

[1] The problem with "modern" is that it carries with itself a value
   judgement, as a stowaway, so to speak. If you ain't "modern", you're
   a luddite or something. That kind of thing makes communication hard.
   It's difficult to listen, with all that shouting.

[2] I know, I know. I repeat myself. Must be an age thing. Apologies.

-- tomás

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#209622

On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 10:06:23 +0200
<tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:


> 
> [1] The problem with "modern" is that it carries with itself a value
>    judgement, as a stowaway, so to speak. If you ain't "modern",
> you're a luddite or something. That kind of thing makes communication
> hard. It's difficult to listen, with all that shouting.

Never forget, not all progress is in the forward direction. It was
progress which led to the Dark Ages.

-- 
Joe

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#209647

Joe wrote:

>> 
>> [1] The problem with "modern" is that it carries with itself a value
>> judgement, as a stowaway, so to speak. If you ain't "modern",
>> you're a luddite or something. That kind of thing makes communication
>> hard. It's difficult to listen, with all that shouting.
> 
> Never forget, not all progress is in the forward direction. It was
> progress which led to the Dark Ages.

After the civilization caring the progress collapsed - do not take things
out of the context please.

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#209619

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On Tue, Jun 04, 2019 at 10:51:31PM +0300, Georgi Naplatanov wrote:

[...]

> PulseAudio is some kind of mixer/proxy between ALSA and desktop
> applications. In modern GNU/Linux OSes it's discouraged to remove/not
> using PulseAudio.

Because... Reasons. What is a "modern GNU/Linux OS" anyway?

This ain't very helpful. More detailed: if you want your Gnome
desktop environment to work "out of the box" and your (newer)
Firefox to have access to sound, you're better off with Pulse.

If you don't care about those things -- or are in for some
fiddling -- by all means, drop Pulse, and tell us others about
it!

[...]

> Why don't you want to use PulseAudio, any problems?

Hmmm.

Cheers
-- t

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#209638

On Wed, Jun 05, 2019 at 10:12:54AM +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> If you don't care about those things -- or are in for some
> fiddling -- by all means, drop Pulse, and tell us others about
> it!

I never installed it to begin with.  And my primary browsing has been in
google-chrome-stable for quite some time now, mostly due to the fact that
at the time I switched over, Firefox's javascript performance was simply
too slow for the kinds of web games I was playing.  Firefox's unilateral
out-of-nowhere decision to stop supporting the vast majority of user
add-ons wasn't a plus, either.

When I do youtube stuff in google-chrome-stable, it just works, and I've
never had to mess with anything other than un-muting and raising the
volume through alsamixer.  At least not on my last couple systems.
(Before those, I had a system with on-board audio and a sound card, and
ALSA had to be beaten over the head to tell it which device to use.)

So, ALSA is definitely not perfection, but I've heard far more horror
stories from Pulse Audio users than from ALSA users.

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#209639

I personally use pulse on chrome and firefox without problems of any sort

Renato Gallo 

System Engineer 
sede legale e operativa: Via Privata Cefalonia, 14 - 20156 - Milano (MI) 
Tel. +39 02 - 87049490 
Fax +39 02 - 48677349 
Mobile. +39 342 - 6350524 
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Wi | SMS: https://sms.way-interactive.com 
Wi | Voip: https://voip.way-interactive.com 
Asterweb: http://www.asterweb.org 

Le informazioni contenute in questo messaggio e negli eventuali allegati sono riservate e per uso esclusivo del destinatario. 
Persone diverse dallo stesso non possono copiare o distribuire il messaggio a terzi. 
Chiunque riceva questo messaggio per errore è pregato di distruggerlo e di informare immediatamente [ mailto:info@sigmaware.it | info@ ] asterweb.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "Greg Wooledge" <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org>
To: "debian-user" <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 5, 2019 2:43:31 PM
Subject: Re: Replacing Pulseaudio with Alsa alone

On Wed, Jun 05, 2019 at 10:12:54AM +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> If you don't care about those things -- or are in for some
> fiddling -- by all means, drop Pulse, and tell us others about
> it!

I never installed it to begin with.  And my primary browsing has been in
google-chrome-stable for quite some time now, mostly due to the fact that
at the time I switched over, Firefox's javascript performance was simply
too slow for the kinds of web games I was playing.  Firefox's unilateral
out-of-nowhere decision to stop supporting the vast majority of user
add-ons wasn't a plus, either.

When I do youtube stuff in google-chrome-stable, it just works, and I've
never had to mess with anything other than un-muting and raising the
volume through alsamixer.  At least not on my last couple systems.
(Before those, I had a system with on-board audio and a sound card, and
ALSA had to be beaten over the head to tell it which device to use.)

So, ALSA is definitely not perfection, but I've heard far more horror
stories from Pulse Audio users than from ALSA users.

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#209648

Renato Gallo wrote:

> I personally use pulse on chrome and firefox without problems of any sort

same here but I'm not using chrome at all. I use from time to time BT audio
and pulse comes handy there. I am not sure if alsa can handle this.

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#209652

On Wednesday 05 June 2019 02:02:59 pm deloptes wrote:

> Renato Gallo wrote:
> > I personally use pulse on chrome and firefox without problems of any
> > sort
>
> same here but I'm not using chrome at all. I use from time to time BT
> audio and pulse comes handy there. I am not sure if alsa can handle
> this.

Stretch, std FF, got sound, no pa stuff installed.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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#209641

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On Wed, Jun 05, 2019 at 08:43:31AM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 05, 2019 at 10:12:54AM +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > If you don't care about those things -- or are in for some
> > fiddling -- by all means, drop Pulse, and tell us others about
> > it!

> When I do youtube stuff in google-chrome-stable, it just works, and I've
> never had to mess with anything other than un-muting and raising the
> volume through alsamixer.

[...]

For me, it's cclive or youtube-dl. I don't like others watching me
watching videos ;-)

> So, ALSA is definitely not perfection, but I've heard far more horror
> stories from Pulse Audio users than from ALSA users.

This might as well be selection bias: folks avoiding Pulse are in for
it and may be readier to Know What They're Doing (TM).

Cheers
-- tomás

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#209624

Hi,

On Tue, 4 Jun 2019 22:51:31 +0300
Georgi Naplatanov <gosho@oles.biz> wrote:

> On 6/4/19 10:24 PM, Kaj Persson wrote:
> > I am running Debian 9 Stretch. After the OS install the Pulseaudio is
> > by default the standard audio system with Alsa as the executor. Which
> > is the best strategy to remove Pulseaudio and instead letting Alsa be
> > the one and only audio system? 
> 
> PulseAudio is some kind of mixer/proxy between ALSA and desktop
> applications. In modern GNU/Linux OSes it's discouraged to remove/not
> using PulseAudio.
> 
> Are there any serious disadvantages doing so?
> 
> If you don't use PulseAudio then only one application can use an ALSA
> device at the same time on your computer.

really? Here I can play back a video in firefox and play another video
from harddisk in vlc and the sound tracks are happily mixed by alsa (not
that it's an enjoyable experience, but it works :)

Regards

Michael


.-.. .. ...- .   .-.. --- -. --.   .- -. -..   .--. .-. --- ... .--. . .-.

One does not thank logic.
		-- Sarek, "Journey to Babel", stardate 3842.4

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#209627

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On Wed, Jun 05, 2019 at 11:20:58AM +0200, Michael Lange wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, 4 Jun 2019 22:51:31 +0300
> Georgi Naplatanov <gosho@oles.biz> wrote:

[...]

> > If you don't use PulseAudio then only one application can use an ALSA
> > device at the same time on your computer.
> 
> really? Here I can play back a video in firefox and play another video
> from harddisk in vlc and the sound tracks are happily mixed by alsa (not
> that it's an enjoyable experience, but it works :)

Straight from the Horse's Mouth:

  "ALSA support was dropped starting Firefox 52.0 and later.
   Some Linux distros may have delayed this change with their
   own third-party Firefox packages to use ALSA until more
   recently.

   You could compile Firefox yourself with --disable-pulseaudio
   --enable-alsa

   Keep in mind that if you do this you will not get updates from
   Mozilla as it will be a third-party build."

(see e.g. [1]). Checking what options your distro compiled it
with is left as an exercise to the reader :-)

Now don't expect your distro maintainer's to continue indefinitely
maintaining your firefox's port in a non-standard configuration.

This is significant work, so if you care about it, do step in.

Cheers

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1209469

-- t

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#209631

Hi,

On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 11:33:15 +0200
<tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:


> Now don't expect your distro maintainer's to continue indefinitely
> maintaining your firefox's port in a non-standard configuration.
> 

sure, I don't expect anything in particular ;)
But I believe I can perfectly wait with taking action until it becomes
necessary and decide then what to do.

And when everyone seems to say that there is no sound in firefox without
PA, it appears to be definitely not true for now, at least with debian
stable.

Regards

Michael

.-.. .. ...- .   .-.. --- -. --.   .- -. -..   .--. .-. --- ... .--. . .-.

Women professionals do tend to over-compensate.
		-- Dr. Elizabeth Dehaver, "Where No Man Has Gone Before",
		   stardate 1312.9.

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#209632

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On Wed, Jun 05, 2019 at 12:13:54PM +0200, Michael Lange wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 11:33:15 +0200
> <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:
> 
> 
> > Now don't expect your distro maintainer's to continue indefinitely
> > maintaining your firefox's port in a non-standard configuration.
> > 
> 
> sure, I don't expect anything in particular ;)
> But I believe I can perfectly wait with taking action until it becomes
> necessary and decide then what to do.
> 
> And when everyone seems to say that there is no sound in firefox without
> PA, it appears to be definitely not true for now, at least with debian
> stable.

What miffs me is that no-one in this thread seems to really care
enough to go check the sources. But then, some still seem to care
enough to go ballistic and complain loudly.

As I said, I'm happy with my Firefox having no sound (it hasn't;
actually I do prefer it that way), so I haven't done any research
into why.

What is your distro's version? What is your Firefox's version?

Anyone out there care to download the Debian source package and
check what the compile options are? This *must* be visible in the
Debian-specific patches, right?

Cheers
-- tomás

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#209635

On Wed 05 Jun 2019 at 12:27:30 +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:

> Anyone out there care to download the Debian source package and
> check what the compile options are? This *must* be visible in the
> Debian-specific patches, right?

Not necessary. Use about:buildconfig.

-- 
Brian.

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#209649

Hi,

On Wed, 5 Jun 2019 12:27:30 +0200
<tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:

(...)
> What miffs me is that no-one in this thread seems to really care
> enough to go check the sources. But then, some still seem to care
> enough to go ballistic and complain loudly.
> 
> As I said, I'm happy with my Firefox having no sound (it hasn't;
> actually I do prefer it that way), so I haven't done any research
> into why.
> 
> What is your distro's version? What is your Firefox's version?

It's stretch with FF 60.7.0esr

Regards

Michael


.-.. .. ...- .   .-.. --- -. --.   .- -. -..   .--. .-. --- ... .--. . .-.

Schshschshchsch.
		-- The Gorn, "Arena", stardate 3046.2

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#209633

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On Mi, Jun 05, 2019 at 11:20:58 +0200, Michael Lange wrote:
>Georgi Naplatanov <gosho@oles.biz> wrote:
>> If you don't use PulseAudio then only one application can use an ALSA
>> device at the same time on your computer.
>really? Here I can play back a video in firefox and play another video

No, I don’t think so.
IIRC: In the beginning of ALSA you needed a soundcard with hardware 
mixing capabilities. Later, ALSA got a mixer plugin itself.

So, you don’t need Pulse to have multiple audio sources.
And if you only have one soundcard, PulseAudio is overkill. Besides, 
PulseAudio lies on top of ALSA.

The advantages of PulseAudio are:
- more than one soundcard, maybe even changing (onboard, USB soundcare, 
  headset, etc.)
- you want to move the application from one soundcard to another without 
  reconfiguring the application to the new soundcard
- network capabilities

Shade and sweet water!
	
	Stephan

-- 
| Stephan Seitz          E-Mail: stse@fsing.rootsland.net |
| Public Keys: http://fsing.rootsland.net/~stse/keys.html |

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#209616

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On 04/06/2019 20:24, Kaj Persson wrote:
> I am running Debian 9 Stretch. After the OS install the Pulseaudio is 
> by default the standard audio system with Alsa as the executor. Which 
> is the best strategy to remove Pulseaudio and instead letting Alsa be 
> the one and only audio system? Are there any serious disadvantages 
> doing so?
> /Kaj
>
PulseAudio gives sound across the network. Wouldn't be without it.

-- 
Mike Howard

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