[pulseaudio-discuss] Accessing audio as root

[Bill Cox]

On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 12:27 PM, Lennart Poettering
<lennart at poettering.net> wrote:
> We actually cover that inside of gdm, where you can get access to the
> boot messages.
>
> Lennart

Speakup doesn't stop reading when the user logs into Gnome.  When we
type Ctrl+Alt+F1, we get a console screen which is read by speakup.
It reads the login prompt, and then all the console text after login,
whether as a normal user, or as root.  It runs in parallel with Gnome,
and never exits until shutdown.  Most blind Linux users I know love
this behaviour, and will not consider Linux distros that don't support
it.  This is why web sites like this recoment removing PulseAudio from
Ubuntu:

http://live.gnome.org/Orca/UbuntuKarmic

This is why Ubuntu disables PulseAudio if the user selects an
"accessible install".  I would like to help Ubuntu keep PulseAudio
even with an accessible install.

Any "right" solution should require little and probably zero changes
to programs like speakup.  We should be able to tell the sound system
that speakup is allowed to share the sound card with PA.  Speakup
already has both pulseaudio and alsa drivers, and if we can get either
working with PA in parallel, we're in good shape.

Bill