[gentoo-user] Re: Phonon + PulseAudio Problem

[Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de>]

On 05/20/2010 09:44 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
> On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 12:57 PM, Nikos Chantziaras<realnc@arcor.de>  wrote:
>> On 05/20/2010 08:30 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
>>>
>>>   Don't
>>> even mention OSS4; the sound architecture goes in user space, not the
>>> kernel.
>>
>> I don't care where they go (why the hell should I?), for as long as they
>> work.
>
> You should care, because if it breaks inside the kernel, it probably
> takes away the whole operating system. And then you lose work and
> you're sad.

Well, it doesn't break here.  It's been rock-solid through the years. 
It's too bad it's going to die though; it was the only way to get solid 
sound for me.  ALSA with its out-of-kernel dmix sucked, like, forever.

What doesn't work is PulseAudio, actually.  Too many problems with it. 
Pulse is simply broken by design; it's too far from the kernel to be any 
good.


> But don't take my word for it; Intel+Nokia are using PulseAudio in
> MeeGo, and Google it's doing the same with Android. They are making an
> opinion with their wallets.
>
> (And doesn't really matters, but I haven't heard that it's possible to
> switch audio from internal speakers to bluetooth headset with OSS4, so
> as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't work.)

ALSA can't switch to Bluetooth either.  You could use PulseAudio with 
OSS4 instead of with ALSA though, but this is not officially supported.