[badgersandjam]

You're entirely right and I've upvoted you.

However, with one small caveat: servers don't generally have sound cards so the impact of this was relatively low. There aren't that many desktop Linux users out there. I mean I'm a Unix guy at heart and I'm typing this on a Windows laptop. I've never used Linux on the desktop and probably never will.

Now servers do have init processes and we don't really want to spend the next 3-4 years being guinea pigs. I'm quite happy for the vendors to do this behind the scenes or offer it as an alternative but we've got an RHEL+CentOS release with systemd in it already and a Debian with systemd in it just around the corner. A pulseaudio situation, even for 6 months, will result in no small amount of chaos.

I do indeed remember times before even ALSA when you had to pay OSS for drivers for your turtle beach card etc. But that's in the distant past, not right now and of little relevance. Windows was fine on the desktop then as well and the sound worked fine out of the box.

[josteink]

> I mean I'm a Unix guy at heart and I'm typing this on a Windows laptop. I've never used Linux on the desktop and probably never will.

Then you're not really a Unix guy at heart.

At home, all I run is Linux, including the laptop my non-geeky wife uses.

For me it was a hard choice. I knew she would object because it would be "different" and she's not really interested in learning a gazillion different computing-systems, but on the flip side it meant it was simpler, quicker and less work for me to maintain the computers at home.

Once setup things just work, and ensuring everything (including flash and other vulnerability vectors) is up to date is one apt-get upgrade away.