[stephen_g]

The main problem was that a particular popular distribution made PulseAudio its default audio system before it was ready for that, and did a bad job integrating and testing it.

That wasn't Lennart's fault. PulseAudio is a really mature and stable system now.

[Sanddancer]

I disagree. PulseAudio is a prime example of Lennart confusing an issue that is fairly specific to Linux to an issue general to Unix. Other Unixes have solutions to the problem of a limited number of audio channels; in such places, PulseAudio only adds needless complexity. Had Lennart instead worked with the people of the Alsa project to improve it, we wouldn't have had any of the problems we saw with pulseaudio, and we wouldn't have yet another layer to deal with in handling audio.