[pulseaudio-discuss] Is running as user smart or dumb?

[Markus Rechberger]

On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 3:52 AM, Bill Cox <waywardgeek at gmail.com> wrote:
> Since I didn't get much response with my more polite e-mail, here's
> what I really think, given my current ignorance about pulseaudio...
>
> PulseAudio is cool, but I fear it's over-engineered by some Ph.D's
> with too much elegance in their solution, and not enough real world
> experience.  Run as user?  Really?
>

it would be ok as long as it would support multiple users.
The problem is that it doesn't care about /etc/group audio permissions and thus
breaks backward compatibility with alsa.

You have a few options
* the easiest one is to remove pulseaudio and get audio work again as
it was meant to be (which is also conform to all other unixsystems)
* another way would be to run pulseaudio as system daemon (depreciated)
* use alsa dmix, and configure pulseaudio to use alsa dmix.

Best Regards,
Markus

> If you think you've got a good reason to do this, is it more important
> than sacraficing accessibility for the blind?  The worst disaster for
> accessibility for the blind and visually impaired has been adoption of
> PulseAduio by the major distros.  I'm personally spending insane hours
> trying to fix this mess, and frankly I could use some direction.
> We've got Orca mostly working now, but the other essential app -
> speakup - is still in limbo.
>
> Now the blind community has no pull.  We can't tell Ubuntu to run
> PulseAudio as a normal deamon.  As a result, our computers come up
> talking but then can't talk once the user logs into gnome.  This is
> because speakup launches a process that starts pulseaudio as the gdm
> user, and since that process continues forever, the gdm copy of
> pulseaudio never dies, and the user's gnome session gets no access to
> the sound card, and Orca wont talk.
>
> I just need a solution.  I'm frankly hoping to get more response to
> this more emotional e-mail than my previous polite one.  I promise to
> be nice once I'm convinced we're not actually letting a bunch of
> inexperienced coders undermine the Linux sound system, which is likely
> to happen once I'm no longer ignorant of what the heck this user-land
> stuff is all about, and when I learn how to write code that gives the
> blind speach on their Ctrl+Alt+F1 consoles from boot, as well as after
> they login.
>
> You know what it's like trying to help a blind user through e-mail to
> figure out what to do when the computer just stops talking?  Ever try
> to explain to a user over the phone how to use a graphical
> application?  It's much worse than that.  The sound system needs to
> work at boot, when we log in, and in fact all the time.  Is that too
> much to ask?  That's what I require from Ubunut/Lucid.  I'm willing to
> write the code to make it happen.  Can anyone please advise me on what
> code needs to be written to get speakup and Orca to both work with
> pulseaudio, from boot, after logging into gnome, and on the console
> windows?
>
> Bill
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