[Wine] Pulseaudio

Oli Warner oli at thepcspy.com
Sun Sep 27 12:40:56 CDT 2009


On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 6:01 PM, vitamin <wineforum-user at winehq.org> wrote:

> The question here is - why would Wine need to add an additional layer to
> it's sound subsystem, when it has already properly functioning lower level
> drivers? Not one, but 2! Which would never go away (OSS is a standard used
> on lots of other *NIXes and ALSA is _the_ sound driver system in Linux). BTW
> look at other sound servers that pulseaudio replaces - ESD and ARTS. And
> where are they now? Wine had more-less working drivers for those (arts
> driver was removed, esd hasn't been touched for ages).
>

I'm not trying to be deliberately obtuse about this but magic and holes
aside, it does something that Wine should strive for; it just works. I'm
certain it's currently neither elegant or efficient but it works.

OSD and ALSA will, as you say, probably be around forever in some form. They
are tried and tested hardware abstraction layers that have served Linux
well, but they're not the whole picture anymore. ESD (and ARTS to a lesser
extent) have tried to bridge their shortfalls and now it's pulseaudio's
turn. That's what desktop linux distributions have decided, that's what
they're developing and as a result, that's what 90-something percent of
desktop Linux users are going to use too.

Ubuntu 9.10 is so tightly integrated with it, getting rid of PA is going to
be more trouble than it's worth and I'd be shocked if the same isn't
mirrored in other desktops. They want to show some level of unity so app
developers have something to focus on instead trying to chase after the
moving target that Linux audio has been for the past decade.

And yes, you're probably right. PA will probably go the way of ESD and ARTS,
getting replaced by something largely incompatible that the desktop Linux
gods decree upon us... But I don't see why "Oh because it'll change in half
a decade's time" is a valid argument. Say you do wait until PA's
replacement, what happens then? No new wine driver because PA+1 will be
replaced in another five-or-so years? This is technology. Things get
replaced. Things move on.

I thought most of Wine's development was about making things work. You hack
around the millions of Windows quirks, hack around the billions of quirks
people use to code their apps for Windows, yet you won't hack around a Linux
desktop quirk? I just don't get it.

And for the record, I'd be more than happy to use ALSA on top of PA (or
directly if it didn't need me to pasuspend) but it doesn't "just work". If
it did work reliably, I doubt there would be this much talk of direct PA
integration.
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