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Right. I have called time on pulse audio.

The final straw was a bout today, when I couldn't even hear a Zoom meeting, never mind contribute to it. I finished that meeting on my mobile phone!

If I boot from cold, start X, immediately configure sound correctly (it insists on landing jammy side down), and never look at or touch again, sound usually works. That's no way to be living. I'm used to linux doing what it's told to, without to lucky charms, rituals, aspirations or invocations, but by configuration.

So pipewire or plain old alsa? Can anyone show me how to get pulse out of my configs?

There is also apulse, it is designed to satisfy applications which were built with PulseAudio sound enabled. The best of course is to build every application with ALSA enabled and PA disabled. Everything I have is built this way and I even don't have the need for apulse.

Originally Posted by business_kid Right. I have called time on pulse audio. The final straw was a bout today, when I couldn't even hear a Zoom meeting, never mind contribute to it. I finished that meeting on my mobile phone!

Sometimes it seems like the audio from specific programs (or even instances of programs) starts up with volume turned way down (if not off).

Ah yeah, the very same thing has happened for me with zoom... on Ubuntu(!). More than once and yes, the reason was what I just described above.

While maybe slightly annoying right there and then, just going to adjust the volume level for the program and it's not really much of a problem for me. For all I know it's possible to change some config somewhere for it to not starting up quite like that, but it hasn't bothered me nearly enough to warrant diving into it.


Thanks
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KarlMag

@karlmag; It's not volume. I keep pavucontrol open for this reason.

It's errant behaviour. I hear audio, until I change the config in pavucontrol, which mutes everything. A reboot doesn't fix it. It takes an extended power off. That is crazy.

Pulse is definitely going. The only question is: What do I replace it with?

@Emerson: Is apulse a pulse replacement? What do you have to rebuild? Does Zoom work?

Not sure whether you are running Slackware 14.2 or -current. In the latter case, have you recently checked whether you are applying the config changes that come with new versions of pulseaudio (in /etc/pulse/) ? Applying some of these changes is really needed.

apulse is fake PA, it emulates the same API as PA, so applications which are compiled with PA support will run and think they are using PA, while in actuality apulse is using plain ALSA. As I said above, none of my applications is hardcoded to use PA, therefore I do not need apulse, have no experience with it. In theory Zoom and all other closed source applications which require PA should work with apulse. Try it out and let us know?

Originally Posted by Alien Bob Not sure whether you are running Slackware 14.2 or -current. In the latter case, have you recently checked whether you are applying the config changes that come with new versions of pulseaudio (in /etc/pulse/) ? Applying some of these changes is really needed.

I'm using ~Current from the 2021-02-11 iso and the latest config changes (moving /etc/pulse/*.new in as config files have been applied, unusually for me. These gave me a very handy configuration tab in pavucontrol. Thing is, I go nowhere near bluetooth anyhow, so I have no need for pulse. I find bluetooth possible but difficult and slow. There's this immense amount of farting about for something with 10 Metres of range.

FYI, there is a solution now for bluetooth audio without PA.

https://github.com/Arkq/bluez-alsa

My true unfiltered thoughts on Bluetooth and this box would probably be moderated …
I'll repeat my filtered comments

Originally Posted by business_kid Thing is, I go nowhere near bluetooth anyhow, so I have no need for pulse. I find bluetooth possible but difficult and slow. There's this immense amount of farting about for something with 10 Metres of range.

Did you see this post from a few days ago?

Originally Posted by business_kid I'm using ~Current from the 2021-02-11 iso and the latest config changes (moving /etc/pulse/*.new in as config files have been applied, unusually for me. These gave me a very handy configuration tab in pavucontrol.

So the problem is fixed?

Originally Posted by business_kid Thing is, I go nowhere near bluetooth anyhow, so I have no need for pulse. I find bluetooth possible but difficult and slow. There's this immense amount of farting about for something with 10 Metres of range.

Now it seems like you're trying to justify your biases for other reasons.

Originally Posted by rkelsen So the problem is fixed?

No. I'm meaning to try apulse, but haven't done so yet. And I have a workaround, however labyrinthine. So the pressure is off.

Originally Posted by rkelsen Now it seems like you're trying to justify your biases for other reasons.

Well, I'd hardly be the best judge of my biases - I'd be biased . For this box, this hardware, bluetooth sucks and I took the decision a long time ago to do without it. It's actually irrelevant to sound, save that the reason to use pulse vanishes. On my phone, bluetooth is an option, as it connects easily and transfers are quick.

Originally Posted by ceed Did you see this post from a few days ago?

No, and thanks for the reply. According to that thread, It seems that to use pipewire,

• I retain libpulse.so from pulseaudio.
• I need to grab libsystemd.so.0 from somewhere.
• I need to box clever starting pipewire as it's fussy.

And all should be good.

It also seems from that thread that Linus' "Bad old LKML days" when poor manners were tolerated or even encouraged (by example) has left residual effects on some programmers. All of us who ever resorted to the LKML, however briefly, have come across it. Being a big head doesn't excuse bad manners or impoliteness, or negate an individual's code. I don't have to like coders, but if their code is the best for a particular purpose, why shouldn't I use it?