[pulseaudio-discuss] Multimedia that *just works*, pretty please!

[David Henningsson]

On 2015-09-20 15:37, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> - when I play a music in any app, it always plays with the same settings on
> the same device through the same backend.

Not everybody share this dream; some people would, e g, prefer phone 
calls to go through headsets while music continues through speakers.

> - It works with USB sound speakers *out of the box*.

I'm not sure what your current problems are, but if you have plugged 
both headphones and USB speakers in, which one should have sound? We 
have an ever exploding combination of devices, applications and wish 
lists from users, coming up with a good default in all cases is not 
simple. (Not an excuse - more of an explanation.)

> - Playback is *stutter* free. All of the times. The Amiga was able to do that
> 20 years ago and so can Linux.

This is a truth with modification. I wasn't around at Amiga time, but 
Linux is not an RTOS. This means e g that other kernel drivers kan keep 
the system in preempt off, causing your process not to be scheduled in 
time to fill up the next buffer. And I bet your Linux system has *way* 
more drivers than your Amiga had (and it probably did not work with USB 
speakers out of the box, either ;-) ).

> Is it just me?
>
> I repeatedly get the impression that multimedia under Linux is a total,
> complete, utter mess. A complete disaster. And I get this impression out of
> real life experiences I make.

But also; we're constantly under-staffed. It's hard to come across a 
project today which says "sorry, we're all full of developers right now, 
please contribute to another project".

A few of us contribute as part of an employment, others do it for fun, 
some do it to fix problems, and some do it to change the world. On 
individual level, keeping everyone happy enough to continue to 
contribute to a project is indeed a challenge in itself. But it's a cool 
challenge. :-)

-- 
David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
https://launchpad.net/~diwic