PulseAudio & !PulseAudio in KDEMM (was: Re: Phonon Sample Cache)

[Ian Monroe]

2011/8/29 Michael Pyne <mpyne at kde.org>:
> On Monday, August 29, 2011 12:41:21 Ian Monroe wrote:
>> tl;dr version of harald's email: the phonon stuff don't work,
>> pulseaudio does, let's use it.
>
> Well that's very broad. Phonon "works" for me for years now (of course I
> jumped on the phonon-gst ship years before it was cool to have done so ;).
> Really, Phonon has been generally very solid for me since soon after its
> inception.
>
> The problems *have* related to device enumeration, where the right output
> device was selected but renamed compared to what had been there before, giving
> some warning popups on login, though I haven't seen that in awhile.
>
> I fully support integrating as nicely as possible with PA for those who need
> its features, but I would hope we don't forget why Phonon was developed in the
> first place, it wasn't that long ago when a completely different sound system
> was the big 800lb gorilla which would "obviously" be the only system for the
> KDE 4 lifespan...

But it *wasn't* developed so that every desktop could have a complex
set of different possible setups. The fact that we can make Pulse
Audio essentially required on Linux without changing API is a
testament to the fact that Phonon is fulfilling its intended purpose
of not wedding us to a technology for the life of an API.

Ian