Slashdot Mirror
Firefox Goes PulseAudio Only, Leaves ALSA Users With No Sound (omgubuntu.co.uk)
An anonymous reader shares a report: If you're a Linux user who upgraded to Firefox 52 only to find that the browser no longer plays sound, you're not alone. Firefox 52 saw release last week and it makes PulseAudio a hard dependency -- meaning ALSA only desktops are no longer supported. Ubuntu uses PulseAudio by default (as most modern Linux distributions do) so the switch won't affect most -- but some Linux users and distros do prefer, for various reasons, to use ALSA, which is part of the Linux kernel. Lubuntu 16.04 LTS is one of the distros that use ALSA by default. Lubuntu users who upgraded to Firefox 52 through the regular update channel were, without warning, left with a web browser that plays no sound. Lubuntu 16.10 users are not affected as the distro switched to PulseAudio.
While I quite like PulseAudio, does it even run on anything but ALSA? And would therefore maintaining the old ALSA-only codepath in parallel not be much of an imposition?
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Since all the power users will bail at the 57pocalypse anyway, Mozilla is subtly trying to encourage earlier migration.
How exactly will using PulseAudio fix bugs that're due to ALSA, when it is also a client of ALSA? Surely if the bugs were in the system, and not the client, then Firefox-on-PulseAudio would be exactly as failsome as Firefox-on-ALSA.
It's LennartCode. As long as it works on his machine and at least 90% of machines out there, it's going to be adopted. Kind of like systemd. I'm only a hater because there's a severe problem on my laptop which I can't debug and no one has been able to offer any advice on.
Now I'm not one to easily take offence (despite what many here seem to think), but THIS is offensive:
https://www.freedesktop.org/wi...
Quoth the page:
"As PulseAudio forms part of what is typically preferred to as the plumbing layer of Linux userspace, it is a non-trivial job to integrate it fully to form a complete system. This is why we strongly encourage you to go via your distribution whenever possible."
When did hell did Linux become a "fuck you don't touch the innards" system?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
When I was hired at my current employer in 2012, I got a Thinkpad T-series laptop. I installed Debian Squeeze with the XFCE desktop environment on it, and it worked beautifully. I dist-upgraded that installation to Wheezy when that release was made. No problems, everything just continued working. After Wheezy became oldstable, I dist-upgraded to Jessie. No problems, everything just continued working. A few months ago, I switched to a Skylake-powered desktop machine, simply by transferring all the data on the Thinkpad's SSD to my new rig's larger one. No problems, everything just continued working.
Today I got a notification from Firefox (I install new releases via Debian's mozilla repository, https://mozilla.debian.net/) that it won't be able to play back sound if I didn't install PulseAudio. A quick `sudo apt-get install pulseaudio` and a reboot (to also apply a pending Kernel upgrade) later: No problems, everything just continued working. `mpv` defaults to the pulse output instead of alsa automatically, apparently. Firefox, once again, plays back sound out of the box. My desktop audio player (some xmms-fork whose name I can't recall right now) needed to be switched from plain ALSA to pulse via its configuration panel - that was it. My stereo headset becomes the active, default output once I plug it in, and the speakers assume that role as soon as I unplug it. Also, the PulseAudio/pavucontrol features I gained from finally switching are pretty neat.
Bottom line, I guess: PulseAudio in 2017 _just effin' works_. Save yourself some time, skip the whining and bitching, get with the times and install it already.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
For now.. Supposedly, this is to be removed in the future.
Mozilla developers planned this last year, and when watchful users objected in the related issue, Mozilla staff closed it to comments. They then pushed the system-breaking change to the world, with no mention of it in the release notes. When users whose systems were broken said so in a bug report, Mozilla closed it to comments, too.
I understand the need to minimize clutter in bug reports, but by taking away the only existing channel for users to engage with decision-makers, Mozilla is effectively sticking their fingers in their ears and telling their community to suck it up. How ironic that this was done by Mozilla's engineering community manager. How telling that his public comment invited people to email him to discuss it directly (making himself look good on record), yet he has completely ignored email messages sent to him in the days since then.
I always thought that one of the open source community's greatest strengths was our dedication to helping one another. When I write free software, and encourage people to use and depend on it in their daily lives, I take care to avoid causing unnecessary problems for them in future updates, even if their needs are different from my own. If I do cause such a problem and a bunch of them take the time to identify and report it, I see that as a sign that I made a mistake, I take responsibility for my actions, and I return their favor by spending a bit of time reworking my design.
I do this work partly for personal satisfaction in creating quality software, and partly because I don't like jerking people around, but mostly because I know that my time donated to the community is repaid indirectly, through all the contributions those people make to other open source projects. One of them might be writing the documentation for my favorite version control system, another might be using unusual hardware that exposes an OS bug that I'll need fixed next year, and others might have donated money or suggested a good design idea to projects that make my life easier in some other way. I give a little in the short term, and in return, I receive a lot in the long term.
This ecosystem of diverse and indirect contributions works amazingly well. I don't believe we would have Firefox, Chrome, MacOS (remember its Mach & BSD roots?), Android, Linux, or hundreds of thousands of other wonderful things if not for people in different situations helping one another like this.
So, when developers of a project like Firefox shut out a cross-section of the community that made their jobs possible and from whom they will almost certainly continue to benefit over time, it seems greedy to me. When they deliberately break the systems of the people whom they encouraged to depend on their software, especially when it's something so integral to daily life as the web browser, it seems irresponsible to me. And when onlookers choose disrupt the ensuing discussions by slinging useless comments like "freeloader" or "works for me" at other community members despite receiving value every day from this same community, they seem like hypocritical trolls.
I think we can do better than this. The open source community thrives on diversity and collaboration. Firefox can be replaced, but if we become another monoculture of self-absorbed know-it-alls, we all will have lost an asset of immeasurable value.
tl;dr: Dear Mozilla, you're doing it wrong.