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Alsa is fine, if you needed absolutely no features whatsoever. This weird glamorization of alsa as sufficient or at all adequate feels like itcs true, for only rhe most basic basic basic of users. Anyone who has ever plugged in a usb headset or connected a bluetooth headset or plugged an hdmi output into their laptop knows the value of pulseaudio. It's role as a modular, pluggable, controllable audio intermediary layer is invaluable: it has a great control panel that lets you say, ok app, start sending your output somewhere else now. Even if you only have one soundcard ever: it let you adjust per app volume! Utterly basic need. To propose that users ought have been fine without these basic capabilities is insanity. Alsa was insanity. Alsa was a dead, impotent, lifeless husk. It let apps output audio to a device, if you knew to try various hardcoded strings like hw:1.0, hw:2.0, hw:2.1. But that was all alsa was good for. One couldnt open a control panel & change the volume of an app. One couldnt send an app to a new output (bluetooth, hdmi, usb audio). Trying to get a sound card to pick between various output modes, for optical output for example, was hell: i spent literally days getting optical audio going. Everything required careful scripting in a shitty awful .alsarc dsl to do anything good. Pulseaudio made it all much easier. I have no clue why anyone would valorize alsa. It was incredible finnicky, super hard to configure. It feels like certain sects just want to spread poison against linux & freedesktop. There have always been reactive, outraged camps. Eternally dismayed at progress, at better. I just can't take seriously the thought that alsa was an appropriate & adequate tool for end users, in any way though. It's ridiculous: nothing worked without careful careful delicate scripting & trial by error, and the system was utterly static, unable to respond to change. Alsa was not an end user system, unlike pulseaudio: it was an api for software. Pulseaudio changed the game. I am so tired lf hearing pretenses that alsa was ok or enough. It never was amything remotely adequate. The nonsense hate has to die. Progress was required. I saw it work flawlessly on many systems even in the earliest days. It wasn't & still usually isn't required. I don't see what anyone could be asking for. It just seems like a need to sow doubt. |