The PulseAudio death-march is killing off the Linux base.
I have been using Linux off and on since 1997. I would still like to know what typeface was used in the early Slackware config screens, where I had to select video modes, add modules for an ATI busmouse, and in general describe by hand the hardware environment to the software. Back in the days when licensing was still in the future for the most part, and pico was not yet nano.
And I am done. For years, sound issues in Linux have been due to the all-consuming drive to accomplish a direct network-packet-audio whatnot that I DO NOT CARE ABOUT. Meanwhile, this effort has meant that the very successful solutions for just plain listening to things on your machine (or online, given the right players) have been made unavailable. I have seen more than one “defense” of the practice from well-connected Linux geeks saying that the only way they can get Adobe (or Macromedia, or whomever is to be whined about today) to write drivers for Linux is to have a mass outcry from the users.
[pullquote]I don’t want the developers to make me cry. I had Vista for that[/pullquote]
Hello? As a user, I don’t want the developers to make me cry. I had Vista for that. The towering arrogance of the developers to create discord among the user base by intentionally breaking things or, at best, leaping to implement a solution which is not ready. Well, Linux is missing a rung on a ladder it cannot afford to fall from. Success must build upon success, and failing on purpose is no way to meet your goals.
Ubuntu has now made it impossible (at my combined level of skill and motivation) to shift back from the crippled PulseAudio to the reliable and perfect for my purposed eSound. You can’t do it through the GUI, and the apt-get repositories have been sabotaged so that eSound is now merely a pointer to an API-call compatibility layer for–yep, PulseAudio. This act of code vandalism was the last straw.
It’s no secret that many professional Windows IT types use Macintosh for tasks at home that they must aid users to accomplish on Windows at work. Many use Linux as well. Personally I have all three systems represented at my house.
If I do not find a distro which has avoided the PulseAudio trap, I have no need to stay here. I am, after all comfortable in the Mac and Windows worlds. Much to my surprise, after my fury at the Vista debacle (imagine an entire operating system run like the sound system in Ubuntu), I like Windows7 a lot.
I don’t know if the developers are aware that in the federal (Defense anyway) software procurement decision-making system, there is a requirement to evaluate open-source software for functional equivalence to the stuff that is usually very expensive, partly because Feds buy it. I have been one of the open-source evangelists in the inside, but now, where can I go with it? I don’t even want to use it for free at home; I’m certainly not going to connect it to my employment or recommend that anybody else do so.
It’s not even the technical merits which are so disappointing. After all, I have seen audio work flawlessly in Linux. It’s the decision-making which is the real point of offense here, and none of my technical efforts can touch that.
For all of their supposed good intentions, the developers have become the opposite of a community oriented team. Ubuntu with its squishy kumbaya branding is telling users to fuck or walk.
Bye.
