This post should be prefaced with something like "for those who use pulseadio" or something like that. Not everybody uses pulseaudio (like me) and I can see newbies who don't know anything, and not using pulseaudio, trying this and wondering why it doesn't work.
How to easily fix problems with pulseaudio for newbies
- Thread starter rado84
- Start date
CaffeineAddict
Well-Known Member
For people who experience pulseaudio not starting up upon login, all you have to do is run:
Do not use
Bash:
systemctl --user restart pulseaudioDo not use
sudo, it must be run as standard user
I have to agree with Crippled2013 & ron.alan. Indeed, not everybody uses PulseAudio.....Puppy has never really subscribed to it, and apart from a few re-masters briefly flirting with it, our members already have their sights on its replacement.....PipeWire (along with WirePlumber).
Apart from briefly using PulseAudio during my distro-hopping days (and hating it!), I am - and always have been - a 'straight' ALSA man. Far from making audio management easier, all PA has ever done is to add a plethora of additional mouse-clicks to get anything done. It adds another layer of complexity, and insulates the user even further from the actual mechanics of Linux audio. Thank you again, Lennart Poettering!
(I will add here that I DO understand one of the main reasons PA - and now PipeWire - have come onto the scene the way they have. Mostly - despite what the devs might profess - it's to make things easier in order to attract more new users. While I agree with this reason, I still don't like the way it's been implemented...)
I haven't yet looked at PipeWire. My understanding is that it works along similar lines to the JACK audio server.......where you literally draw a line between two components in a window to make those items work together? (I'm probably wrong, so correct me if that's the case.)
Mike.
Apart from briefly using PulseAudio during my distro-hopping days (and hating it!), I am - and always have been - a 'straight' ALSA man. Far from making audio management easier, all PA has ever done is to add a plethora of additional mouse-clicks to get anything done. It adds another layer of complexity, and insulates the user even further from the actual mechanics of Linux audio. Thank you again, Lennart Poettering!
(I will add here that I DO understand one of the main reasons PA - and now PipeWire - have come onto the scene the way they have. Mostly - despite what the devs might profess - it's to make things easier in order to attract more new users. While I agree with this reason, I still don't like the way it's been implemented...)
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I haven't yet looked at PipeWire. My understanding is that it works along similar lines to the JACK audio server.......where you literally draw a line between two components in a window to make those items work together? (I'm probably wrong, so correct me if that's the case.)
Mike.
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Done. At the time I posted this topic pipewire didn't exist yet, so there was no need to write it differently.
Supposedly it uses less resources than Alsa or PulseAudio. I haven't personally quantified that myself yet.
Also it's supposed to have less latency. From what I understand, Pulse and Alsa have hardware limitations.
Pipewire is more for professionals, I can say this for sure. My DSP and HDSP have a lot more options on my system
with a soundBlaster than I do on the systems with only the built-in audio. So that part appears to be true.
I read a couple of articles a while back about how the Apple/Mac pretty much owned the professional recording
studio for the last decade of so, but now with Pipewire, Linux is making in-roads into professional recording.
I don't use Pipewire either. I use alsa.
Not exactly. You can't use ALSA without PulseAudio. Well, you can but you won't like the output - in most cases... ALSA is driver for the hardware, whereas PulseAudio provides software stuff like equalizer, mixer, volume settings, even volume boost and other GUI settings.
Many Windows games by default use PulseAudio, unless you explicitly "order" them to use ALSA directly in the start script by a line similar to "export audio=ALSA" (I don't remember the line's exact syntax cuz I haven't used such a script for a very long time). But in most cases ordering them to use ALSA directly leads to a game with no sound or if there IS sound, it's crackling like crazy. Like "GRID 2", for instance. "Ordered" to use ALSA = bye, bye, sound. PulseAudio - you even forget you're playing it in Linux.
Some native linux games let you choose what you prefer - pulse or ALSA and the results still vary from game to game.
Install telegram-desktop and you will have it.
It comes as a telegram-desktop dependency.Huh? Excuse me..?
You've obviously never taken a Puppy for a spin! She's pure ALSA, through & through.....except (like ron.alan says) where we have to employ PA 'emulation' - via apulse - for things like getting Firefox to produce audio output.
As for "can't use ALSA without PulseAudio"......nope, sorry; can't agree with that. What d'you think Linux used for all those years before Lennart Poettering put out PA?
Early, "reverse-engineered" Creative SoundBlaster drivers laid the foundation for the Open Sound System in 1993. OSS morphed into its open-source replacement in 1998; this was ALSA (the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). Poettering originally wrote PA in 2004; at this point in time it was called Polypaudio.....the 'PulseAudio' moniker finally arrived in 2006. By my reckoning that makes - according to you - around 15 years of "unusable" Linux audio? I find that rather hard to believe..!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PulseAudio is an additional layer between ALSA and the user, ostensibly offering finer-grained control. What it really does is to add an extra layer of complexity, in the process "dumbing it down" & supposedly making things easier for the average user.
Pipewire fulfills largely the same role.
My point is that both the above-mentioned items ride 'on top' of ALSA itself. If you take the time to master ALSA, you will always be able to control your Linux audio, even if PulseAudio or Pipewire go 'tits-up' and refuse to work.
Admittedly, I'm not a 'gamer'. I haven't the faintest conception of why anyone would wish to waste their time in such a manner. Sorry; that's just me. Guess that makes me a boring old fart, huh?
Mike.
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