[pulseaudio-discuss] system-wide daemon

[Markus Rechberger]

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 5:17 PM, Bill Cox <waywardgeek at gmail.com> wrote:
> The corking stuff in PA is very cool.  I don't think anyone objects to
> it.  But couldn't we quell all the "PA stinks!" posts by just allowing
> some processes/groups/users to have constant access to audio?
>
> Comparisons to MAC and Windows have been going on for a while, and the
> PA guys are basically right that PA is more like Windows and Mac than
> the older sound systems.  If I'm not mistaken, the real issue is all
> the very valid reasons people out in Linux land have for multi-user
> simultaneous access to sound.  I'd say those guys are generating most
> of the negative PA e-mails I read, and not just on this forum.
>

you cannot compare it with mac, on mac multiuser access works like it
worked with alsa and OSS.
The only point is that this behavior should be considered to be fixed
up again in future.
I would not wonder if a remote login in windows as a different
permitted user would provide audio support.
I do agree that when the user behind the PC is switched that those
audio instances should be exclusive.
But remote terminals are a different topic and should be handled different.
the problem I see with that design is that as soon as the user logs
out the PA process might vanish again
so you are really stuck with the system daemon if you want to get
multiuser support.
although another possibility might that other PA daemons connect to
the first PA instance and just pass through
the first instance might do some user accounting and only shut down
when all other PA instances are gone
but in that case the system wide mode seems to be more elegant again...

Markus