I think I have to ban Mozilla once and for all, this is the last straw

It's not that I haven't fixed this countless times-- it's that I have, and I'm tired of it. ALSA is working.

For nearly 10 years, when sound isn't working-- for whatever reason, I've simply removed PA and it has helped. In SO many contexts, whether interfering with ALSA or simply not working itself. And I've used WebKit and it's not the best, (neither is Gecko, it all sucks to be honest) though I have to say-- I don't want Mozilla in my life. I don't want this crap ever again. It happens too much, there are no real fixes except workarounds (reeks of the "good old days" of Windows) and even those aren't working. F--- this, really. It's gotta go. I have hated Mozilla for years and years, and this is the last damned time.

Before you say it-- this happens with Firefox and IceCat. I only installed IceCat as a workaround for Firefox doing the same thing. The only reason I have PA installed is for this stupid browser.

Tack on all the other idiotic things Mozilla does these days. There's nothing to like. It's just hate, cleverly disguised as software. Sometimes I honestly think PA is even worse than systemd. It's certainly harder to kill. I blame Mozilla for that. Nice job, guys. Because audio isn't a basic feature or anything.

https://imgtc.com/i/yKwXiYs.png

Although it has some restrictions like not allowing some plugins... I'm still using ff ver 52 with Cyberfox.

For some private surfing I use Flashpeak slimjet, and for others I use tor stand alone browser (rather than the bundle).

I cant live with out sound, and have found it difficult to remove pulse because of it's mixer capabilities.

I love PcLinuxOs because of it's Non-systemd intelligence.

I'd like to get rid of Pulse but It seems too difficult, have you got any tips?

I mainly use KDE5 Plasma as my desktop.

have you got any tips?

Not much, I'm suffering right now. I had removed Qupzilla because it was the only thing that needed LLVM and thats a huge file (I do custom distros, the Puppy community wanted to know how optional LLVM was and so did I) but I reinstalled it and removed PA-- much to my horror, Qup needed PA as well! (noooooooo!)

Meanwhile, my very astute colleague Trilo came up with this welcome fix:

compile FF with --disable-pulseaudio --enable-alsa

So at least in theory, it is doable.

Now, the practicality of offering a no-PA fork of a browser, ehhh. I was a happy PM user until they started attacking NoScript.

Why did the the free software ecosystem get so stupid in 2014? From 2007 to 2014 it was mostly progress, from 2014 to the present it is mostly regression.

I've got a list of people who recognise this very global problem, and who are trying to fight our way back to where we were a few years ago, in terms of reliability.

Anyone who feels this way is more than welcome to add their name to the list.

Good luck, and I will try to contact you if I find a better solution (I would share it here, as well.)

If I could describe the GNU/Linux ecosystem from 2007 to 2014 it would be "exciting." From 2014 to now I'd use the word "tiring." I was happy using Debian. Now I make my own stuff. I never thought Debian would be unreliable, stupid or foolish. Not to put it all on Debian, the whole ecosystem is being trashed. Look at you and me, we are doing what we can.

Good luck. (Things didn't always work in 2007 either. This is simply different.)

I love PcLinuxOs because of it's Non-systemd intelligence.

Good man. https://invidio.us/watch?v=Adw772km7PQ

Originally Posted by GlennsPref ....I'd like to get rid of Pulse but It seems too difficult, have you got any tips?....

The README file in this directory might be of interest,

http://slackware.oregonstate.edu/sla...e-alsa-system/

On this site, in the Slackware forum, are one or two threads on how to remove pulseaudio.

I just played https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klqSt64qvVY all the way through with Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 SeaMonkey/2.49.4. Firefox ESR 52 from mozilla.org does not.

# inxi -AS
System:    Host: 00srv Kernel: 4.4.176-96-default x86_64 bits: 64 Console: tty 1 Distro: openSUSE Leap 42.3
Audio:     Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
           Device-2: Intel 8 Series/C220 Series High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.4.176-96-default
00srv:~ # zypper se -si pulse
i | libpulse0               | package | 9.0-8.1 | x86_64 | Update
i | libpulse-mainloop-glib0 | package | 9.0-8.1 | x86_64 | Update

Trying to remove libpulse* results in what appears to be every audio-related app wanting to be removed, 55 packages.

These sorts of 'problems' is why I keep my hand in with OpenBSD, if I finally tire of the stupidity of the new wave Linux developers, I can just install OpenBSD.

(I'm presently getting lock ups with FF - I have to open another tab, & delete the one I was working in!)

FreeBSD does not suffer from this either: running stock FF and it does not pull in PA. If it starts, I can always build from ports and only use sndio. (thanks for that OpenBSD!)

I'm not sure who to blame -- I never could get ALSA playing more than one audio source reliably so, when the horrific crud that is Pulse*spits*Audio came along it actually workd better (I'm typing more from an Ubuntu/Debian perspective).
I'd love to be able to rant about how bad PulseAudio is but, sadly, it's worked better than anything I used before.

Originally Posted by 273 I'd love to be able to rant about how bad PulseAudio is but, sadly, it's worked better than anything I used before.

There is a problem I've never had. At least you're the not first person I've talked to that's had it.

Just a suggestion since you are done with Firefox have you tried Opera? it's based on Chromium but Blows it and Chrome out of the water

As others have stated, Slackware and the BSD's allow Firefox without PA. Just a tip, try to relax, its just software and computers its all ones and zeros...Far more important fears/outrages/stuff to be angry at in the world then PA/Firefox.

Originally Posted by Slackware_fan_Fred Just a suggestion since you are done with Firefox have you tried Opera?

It looks like I'm going to be compiling FF, under protest. All I really want for a browser is to use WebKit and Python and be able to stop JS (and maybe cookies) per-website. Even if it doesn't support PDF or YouTube-- and I would be done with FF forever.

I have used Qupzilla as my media player since this happened, and to my horror it requires PA as well. Opera-- proprietary Chinese nonsense, no. Ungoogled Chromium I would consider, but chances are it is only 64bit.

If I were doing 64bit I would probably just use Brave at this point (under protest.) Iceweasel-UXP is close to working, I think. I don't know if they compile without PA, but I know they don't like Poetterware, and I've talked to the devs before.

I went through something similar with Windows though. From 2002 to 2007 I was tirelessly (well, okay, often I was very tired) working to migrate away from not just Windows, but DOS and QBasic and a bunch of other things. I finally got rid of it years later. I'm really hating Mozilla about as much as Windows at this point. But the real problem is that ALL browsers suck. Mozilla just sucks harder due to the fact that they didn't to begin with. They had to work hard to suck this much-- others just did by default. For a non-free browser, Opera was alright, before they sold it. The problem here is lack of good options.

Just a tip, try to relax

I'll tell you to do the same when you've spent years trying to fix something, and it breaks for the 100th time-- when you were already trying to relax at the very moment it happened.

I've had plenty of serious hassles and problems in my life, this happens to be something I'm extremely and overly tired of dealing with anyway. We all have our pet peeves. Or maybe you're just fine, that's nice-- doesn't really change anything. As the title tries to suggest, it's not the straw, it's my back. My back's tired of all these damned straws, alright? It used to be easier, and I know there are dipshits whose job it is to pile these particular straws onto users. That's the other problem.

I'm not at all ungrateful for the suggestions here. Quite a few of the "found this helpful" votes were mine, and you'll also notice there are 2s and 3s in here-- so I know I'm not the only one.

Stuff like this comes up and I know that's part of my day done-- again. I know I didn't always spend this much time fixing stuff. I reserve the right to be a little resentful over what practically amounts to sabotage and the strictest policy of doing whatever is stupid and destructive. When I think a lot of us feel that way sometimes, I don't know what the point would be in having to argue about it.

Incidentally, this is a conversation I'm having on several forums-- even the Ubuntu forum, where I would not expect someone to understand this (due to cultural differences, not lack of expertise. Debian is basically Ubuntu at this point, at least more than a lot of people realise.) But no one else has suggested that relaxing (or apathy) will solve it.

Originally Posted by freemedia2018 I'll tell you to do the same when you've spent years trying to fix something, and it breaks for the 100th time-- when you were already trying to relax at the very moment it happened.

Been there done that for decades now, actually its that time invested that allows one to relax and not take it so seriously. But alas, horses for courses and we all choose either way.

Not sure what distro you use but....:
https://steemit.com/linux/@crokkon/f...out-pulseaudio
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/apulse/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gentoo/comm...audio/?depth=2
https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/c...pdate/?depth=2

Mostly using stuff based on Void.

I've never gotten apulse to work before. I think the version of ALSA is to blame.

I am not in love with xbps either. Maybe it's great for compiling from source, but I'm reluctant to run it because of the time I've spent putting back the things that broke when I ran updates.

Stable over Rolling any day. I don't need someone's beta versions when they stop the coreutils from working, and I have to boot from Live just to give it whatever library is needed for the system to list and copy files again.

I should just go back to Debian-based. Void seems like it's somewhere between Debian and Gentoo (or whatever you like, Debian and BSD.) At least I respect the what the Gentoo devs are doing, I'm not sure I want to use the result yet.

When something works and I can play around, great. When everything is constant maintenance and brittle as hell, I start complaining. I've spent the past few years mostly fixing things, it should be better-- but every once in a while, something like this-- is just absolute crap. That's the part that makes me wonder WTH is going on.

Originally Posted by 273 I'm not sure who to blame -- I never could get ALSA playing more than one audio source reliably so, when the horrific crud that is Pulse*spits*Audio came along it actually workd better (I'm typing more from an Ubuntu/Debian perspective). I'd love to be able to rant about how bad PulseAudio is but, sadly, it's worked better than anything I used before.

Yes, that was also my experience. Long before it became the default, I installed it out of necessity.