[pulseaudio-discuss] installing header files

[James Bottomley]

On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 21:36 +0200, Lennart Poettering wrote: 
> On Tue, 11.08.09 05:25, Patrick Shirkey (pshirkey at boosthardware.com) wrote:
> 
> >> That Skype is a mess is not really anything free software folks can do
> >> anything about. It's closed source. The Linux version is barely
> >> maintained and does about everything wrong that it can do wrong. I
> >> know that some folks believe that Skype's incompat with PA is my
> >> problem. But quite frankly, it is not. It's Skype's problem.
> >
> > It's not actually. It's the users problem because when they use skype  
> > they can't use pulseaudio. Unless of course they have a second sound  
> > device such as a usb phone. I personally do have one and maybe it should  
> > be recommended as the correct way to use skype on a Linux Audio
> > system.
> 
> Hmm, not sure why having a second audio device should solve any
> problems Skype has with PA. Everything Skype can do with the second
> audio device it should be able to do with the first.

He means hide the second audio device from PA and use it natively in
ALSA for skype.  It's a solution; just not a very elegant one.

> >> Also, Realplayer? Why would anyone want to use that?
> >
> > I understand where your coming from but I think it's a crossover issue  
> > more than anything. People want to use what tehy are comfortable with  
> > and if there is a choice between realplayer and mplayer a lot of people  
> > will choose realplayer. 
> 
> We ship Totem in Fedora, installed by default. I am pretty sure most
> other distributions do that too. People really should use Totem. We
> ship neither realplayer nor mplayer. 

Totem, as most actual users are well aware, is basically hampered by the
lack of codecs (mainly because of patent/licence problems).  In
practise, to view actual content users download from the externally
(outside the problem jurisdiction) hosted Packman (SUSE) or rpmfusion
(Red Hat) xine or mplayer because they have much better codec support.
However, the BBC video codec (I think it's called G2 or something) still
isn't available as a hacked up version for mplayer or xine, so people
still have to use realplayer.  Then there's the problem with functional
rtsp support ...

The upshot is that 90% of all desktop type users have at least one of
xine, mplayer or RealPlayer installed, so breaking 90% of users isn't
really an option.

James

> > Skype has is the most secure voip system in the world. In fact it is so  
> > secure that even the CIA has put a couple billion dollars bounty on a  
> > reliable method to tap it. It's still the most popular voip solution in  
> > the world and there is only one way we can use it on Linux.
> 
> Oha!
> 
> Lennart