[pulseaudio-discuss] using pulseaudio with simultaneous playback from mutiple X sessions

[Ben Bucksch]

On 12.11.2011 21:21, Colin Guthrie wrote:
> Ben Bucksch wrote:
>> On 09.11.2011 11:56, Colin Guthrie wrote:
>>> Now consider two users on an accessible system: One is visually impaired
>>> the other is not
>> - at the same time. OK, but that's really an unrealistic case now.
> No I meant two users on the system. Only one uses the machine at any
> given time.
>
> My point was mainly that the control over whether the sounds from the
> underlying services (be it mpd or some accessibility layer) should be
> user choice, not forced upon them.

Yes, sure. And with pulse, that's trivial: *If* such a daemon really is 
running and disturbing, it's easy to silence via pavucontrol.

> mpd as a daemon shouldn't be forced upon any user

Please check the scenario I outlined again (copied again below).

That was a real case, of a friend who dropped pulseaudio, because that 
wasn't workable.
I have a similar setup, but no problem, because I have a dedicated HTPC 
machine that is always running, and always with the same user account.

>> More realistic is: An average couple, he is a unix geek. He has a 
>> notebook and a tablet. The notebook is connected to speakers, running 
>> mpd for music. Tablet is running mpdroid and controls the mpd.
>>
>> The notebook has 2 users (but never at the same time), so the geek 
>> doesn't want to log in to any particular account just to listen 
>> music, but wants mpd to work irregardless of the logged-in user.
>>
>> There's no conflict, because if the music disturbs her, she'll just 
>> turn around and tell him to stop. Which, I think, will be true for 
>> almost all cases where you have 2 humans around the same computer at 
>> the same time. 

If you don't know mpd, please check it out. The whole idea is that I can 
control from several clients, but the playback is done by the server. 
And it's *really* cool, esp. combined with an Android tablet.

Ben