[justinsaccount]

2000: Audio on linux sucks. If you are lucky you can have two applications generating sound at the same time. You can't hotplug audio devices. You can't have per application volume. You can't move audio streams to different output devices.

2016: Pulseaudio sucks because.. reasons.

[mmastrac]

It's an easy target. It sucks far less all the alternatives, but it's an easy punching bag for people who want something to hate.

I lived through the days of horrible sound support on Linux - I think it was my main desktop until my first Mac around ~2007. Playing video or games was a crapshoot. Hot-plugging audio wasn't even in the realm of possibility.

[icebraining]

Pretty much. You can even send the audio from different applications to different audio devices on the fly, which is something that Windows 7 can't do by itself (you have to change the default audio output before starting each application).

[pyre]

Pulseaudio was forced down people's throats too early by making it the default in Ubuntu and Fedora. People are still bitter about this. That's your "reasons". If these people were still using some godawful combination of ALSA, eSound, OSS and jackd to do things sound-related nowadays they would be complaining just as loudly about that audio stack.