i mean like sndio? or just plain alsa?
Void linux and Exherbo have sndio, why there is no precompiled firefox package that dont need pulseaudio or apulse? in Gentoo you can build firefox without alsa.
how do i modify the slackbuild not to depend on pulseaudio?
it would be nice to have ossv4 too.

Pure ALSA is an option in /extra , but the solution is available for --Current and when 15.0 is out. I don't know how you would achieve a pure ALSA system in older versions of Slackware that have adopted pulse-audio.

I'm not clear on the details, because it's been a while, but, as I recall, Slackware added Pulse Audio because Bluetooth had become dependent on it.

Most likely, but I would assume bluetooth is not an issue as that was not mentioned.

The link I posted includes instructions on how to remove Pulse Audio.

I have not tested them. Personally, I have no problems with Pulse Audio. After its startup issues, it now seems to work quite nicely.

As an aside, I don't have any use for Bluetooth, either. I don't mean I'm against it; I just don't need it to do what I want to do with computers.

The official Firefox package in Slackware is built with --enable-alsa, so it should work on a system with or without pulseaudio (as long as alsa is installed). The pre-built binary provided by Mozilla themselves hasn't had --enable-alsa for years, so it won't work on a system that doesn't have pulseaudio (meaning Slackware systems without pulse can't use ruario's latest-firefox.sh script).

The fact is, pulseaudio is the de facto standard on Linux. Most programs just expect it to be there. Slackware swam against the stream for a long time, but finally added it almost 5 years ago. It's been mostly problem free except for certain setups (like DAWs). Pat added pure-alsa to -current in Apr 2018, but there are a few that are suggesting that Pat remove it before 15.0 is released (and several of these people are ones to run their system without pulse).

3 members found this post helpful.

But in today Slackware-current is an alternative to PulseAudio: its successor, the PipeWire.

I ask you to do this little experiment in an full update slackware-current:
Yes, this is the PipeWire's compatibility daemon with the "legacy" PulseAudio server. Also it is realtime, like JACK, with no latencies.

Why we should look to the past, to BSD things like SNDIO or OSSv4, instead to look to The Linux Future?

Why we should see again and again threads about "za freedom" to use just ALSA or OSS and (again !!!) how much PulseAudio sucks, when the things happens now?

Let's do the math...

We are last people who adopted PAM, we are last people who adopted login1 API, we are last people who adopted Plasma5 (incidentally closely to the day when was released Qt6, the basis of future Plasma6), essentially we do everything when everybody else did it already long years ago and prepares for the next step. Yes, we are last ones on adopting everything.

We always look in the far past instead to look (at least) into near future. Why?

Why I do not see threads about how to setup this PulseAudio successor to give his realtime performances so loved by musicians?

Instead I see THIS. A billionth time rehashed "PulseAudio sucks" thread.

6 members found this post helpful.

The irony is that something like pulseaudio that manages sound routing/mixing itself would have probably run better on top of a simple OSS kernel interface without the additional complexity and duplicated features that alsalib brings to the mix.

I liked OSS/Free back in the day.

2 members found this post helpful.

Is pipewire able to fully replace pulseaudio yet?

Yeah, ALSA still doesn't match it.

Yeah, some turkey is too lazy to use cabled headphones so pat had extra work and we suffer.

Yeah, also making your signature from a famous quote of Adolf Hitler says a lot. But probably it applies well to what the PulseAudio haters says...

However, I for one I do not suffer that in my computers runs PulseAudio. Honestly, I find it rather handy while dealing with my limited audio exigences.

So, about who "we" you talk? And I wonder how many are those "we" of yours?

Because, I suspect that because of those few "whatever" haters wandering around, the Slackware development has been slower and slower, and slower... and even slower.

And that affect all of us.

2 members found this post helpful.

Who knows IF nobody tries?

Of course, we can wait everybody to do it - even the LFS, then 10 years later to adopt it too, using the others experience - while they talks about a Virtual Reality UltraWire ...

I don't feel like I suffered when pulseaudio was added. In fact, it made things easier because I no longer had to tweak asound.conf to switch audio outputs. I think Slackware is better for most users by having pulseaudio. I had no major issues with pure-alsa machines, but it is nice to have everything plug and play without needing to tweak a conf file after playing with your audio outputs (I was doing that for many years before pulseaudio was added).

Not to mention that it wasn't a "turkey too lazy to use cabled headphones", it was BlueZ, the bluetooth stack in Linux removed alsa support and deprecated versions that didn't need pulseaudio. So, if Slackware wanted to have more recent versions of BlueZ, it had to add pulseaudio.

There has since been a bluetooth audio alsa backend called bluez-alsa released that allows bluetooth audio on systems without pulseaudio, but Pat hasn't swapped back, likely because he feels it was the proper decision to add pulseaudio to the system.

Have you tried it? You can't really state that pipewire is able to be an alternative to pulseaudio right now unless it has been tested. That's like saying that GNU Hurd can be a replacement for the Linux kernel without knowing if it actually can replace it *right now*. GNU Hurd is 30 years old and still hasn't had a stable release, and I'd imagine for the *vast* majority of users, it can't replace the Linux kernel without some severe issues.

Of course we'd wait! Slackware doesn't have the clout to push a new piece of software that likely will require other developers to add support (not sure if this is what actually needs to happen, but I imagine developers will need to add support for pipewire). It would be stupid to switch Slackware to only pipewire if no one else is doing it and other software hasn't been made to use it.

1 members found this post helpful.

Just tested pipewire-pulse here by removing pulseaudio.desktop from /etc/xdg/autostart, then created pipewire and pipewire-pulse .desktop entry in /etc/xdg/autostart. Works great on plasma5

Now I can remove kill pulseaudio line from my logout script. Thanks for the hint.

1 members found this post helpful.