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.

Comments

This is silly

[mvdwege]

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?

Re:This is silly

[Desler]

While I quite like PulseAudio, does it even run on anything but ALSA?

Yes, hence why it can be used on BSDs, Solaris and macOS.

Re:This is silly

[jwhyche]

I didn't know they where still maintaining ALSA audio. Did they get all the bugs fixed in PulseAudio? None of my Linux machines have any audio on them at all, so I'm a little out of date.

Re:This is silly

[epyT-R]

Pulse is just an alsa client. Alsa isn't unmaintained. It is the defacto sound system for linux.

Re:This is silly

[Desler]

The ALSA code was subject to a number of bugs that they didn't have the resources to fix. They'll probably be more than welcome to accept your patches to fix the bugs

Re:This is silly

[sjames]

ALSA works great. PulseAudio uses it for actual output. Most apps that output sound will use ALSO if PulseAudio isn't available. So the quickest way to fix most Linux audio problems is to uninstall PulseAudio.

Re: This is silly

[Anonymous Coward]

What benefit do Firefox users get?

Future compatibility for when systemd wraps pulseaudio into itself. You know it's coming.

Re: This is silly

[Anonymous Coward]

ALSA is a kernel interface, PulseAudio is userspace and higher level.

PulseAudio is not just a wrapper and can do a lot of neat stuff like independent volume control, multiple outputs, bluetooth, network transmission, LADSPA filters, etc.

Re: This is silly

[Zan Lynx]

This is how I understand it.

Once Firefox e10s (Electrolysis) with sandboxing is enabled by default, every Firefox content process will be independent and restricted.

Most ALSA devices cannot handle multiple open. And the ALSA solution, dmix, requires shared memory which is a thing sandboxes do not really want to have, and dmix does not understand sandboxes, so it would probably have to be forked and modified.

So Firefox can write their own sound server to get sound data from each independent content tab, or blow huge holes in the sandboxes for ALSA dmix, or they can just use the sound server that already exists and is used by 98% of Linux desktop users: PulseAudio.

Re: This is silly

[Anonymous Coward]

They'd have to resolve the schizophrenic extremes between systemd's THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE USER, and PulseAudio's THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF USERS AND UNIX PERMISSIONS ALONE CANNOT PROTECT THE SOUNDCARD.

Once they figure out how to get audio to work when I'm logged in as both my user and as root in different VCs, then they'll be able to merge the projects.

Most likely, though, they'll just continue to be schizo and merge it as is, and come up with some new way of fucking everyone over to deal with the fallout (much like the "kill every process on logout, even those not attached to the terminal" solves some shitty gnome app not shutting down properly when the X session ends and them being too drunk on the Not Invented Here koolaid to SIGHUP all the processes like everyone has done for decades.)

Re: This is silly

[Qzukk]

ALSA has supported software mixing for over a decade.

Re: This is silly

[epyT-R]

The primary visible feature to most users is per-application volume control.. Essentially, pulse is a userland mixer. It supports effects plugins, multiplexing, network IO, etc. It also adds noticeable latency and has bugs of its own. Alsa also has a software mixer, dmix, but IIRC it was not enabled by default at the time pulse was first released. Without dmix, only one application could open the sound device at a time (unless the device had hardware mixing eg:sblive/audigy). This issue helped drive adoption of pulse. These days, 99% of sound devices are little more than simple DACs so dmix is enabled by default eliminating the need for pulse in typical desktop configurations.

Firefox users who are already using pulse won't notice anything. Those of us who like low latency response and problem free sound from their pulse-free systems (and who don't care about per app volume controls) will miss the direct alsa support.

Re: This is silly

[epyT-R]

alsa-lib is userland and abstracts device differences, though I believe it is possible to write directly to /dev/snd/pcm* if you wanted. I believe any application supporting alsa directly calls this library.

Re: This is silly

[epyT-R]

Endless abstraction has its own costs too.

Re: This is silly

[TWX]

Lies. I can play games while streaming youtube videos and playing mp3s all at the same time on my pulseaudio-free system.

Well, I mean, you could, before.

Re: This is silly

[TWX]

Not OP, but I've had Pulse stop working on a box with long uptimes even though everything else in X worked fine.

I see no reason why software like this should stop working in the two months between sitting down at that console. A desire for that kind of reliability is why I went from a Microsoft desktop to a Linux desktop in the first place.

Re:This is silly

[xororand]

ALSA headquarters

Re: This is silly

[TemporalBeing]

What benefit do Firefox users get?

Future compatibility for when systemd wraps pulseaudio into itself. You know it's coming.

GIven PulseAudio was also written by Poettering I'm surprised it hasn't been already.

That said, PulseAudio is another bastard that needs to die a horrible death. KDE/Qt riped it out long ago because of the issues in favor of GStreamer.

Re: This is silly

[RabidReindeer]

Actually, I think the more accurate word is "channel", not device. Certainly ALSA has mixing capabilities. PulseAudio is more into routing multiple sound pipelines, at least if my memory on the subject isn't too blurred.

I had to work with that stuff a while back and learned to appreciate the virtues of both systems alone and in combination.

I also developed a splitting headache because there's no idiot's guide to Linux sound document I know of that covers all the options (much less when you start adding MIDI and Jack into it). So I forgot a lot of it in self-defense.

Until next time, anyway.

Re:This is silly

[bhepple]

There was something called apulse (https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse) which allowed skype to keep working with alsa when they made skype pulse-only Maybe it would work with firefox too? I'm also a pulse-hater - my sound use-case is very simple. A single simple speaker or headphones and a single mike. Alsa works just fine for that. Why mess it up with a huge pile of code like pulse? They always had it the wrong way around - pulse should have been left as an optional install for those with advanced/complex sound needs. Even better solution would have been a re-write and simplification of alsa's arcane and baroque configuration logic.

so the saying goes

[nimbius]

"pulseaudio/systemd isnt a requirement, you can use something else if you dont like it"
--Lennart Poettering

Re:so the saying goes

[Desler]

You could say that about virtually every software library. Qt isn't required either. Unless you choose to use software that depends on it.

Firefox 52 works fine with ALSA

[volkerdi]

All you need is the --enable-alsa configure option. The resulting Firefox will prefer PulseAudio if it is present, but will use pure ALSA if it is not.

Re:Firefox 52 works fine with ALSA

[KiloByte]

--enable-alsa will go away in Firefox 54. And the build system of Firefox is insane, so you can't expect a regular user to recompile.

With PulseAudio being criminally broken (case in point: doesn't work on the box I sit my butt at right at the moment), the effect is that Firefox has no sound.

Firechrome

[sinij]

It went all down hill after 3.6.

Re:Firechrome

[Desler]

Except Chrome doesn't require PulseAudio. So you're getting exactly what you want in Mozilla choosing their own path.

Feature?

[JWW]

Note for people bothered by the incessant chattering of auto-play content in their browser, this could be a feature and not a bug!!

Re:Told ya

[danbuter]

I think you mean Red Hat is cancer. They are doing their damnedest to force all other Linux distros to bow to their crap ideas.

Everyone is doing it

[phantomfive]

PulseAudio won. Even Slackware gave up and enables pulse audio by default.

Re:Everyone is doing it

[KiloByte]

Only if "produces no sound on hardware where plain ALSA works perfectly" counts as winning for you.

Re:Everyone is doing it

[serviscope_minor]

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?

Re:Everyone is doing it

[phantomfive]

"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."

A clear sign of an over-complex system: one which even programmers and sysadmins are advised to not touch.

Re:Everyone is doing it

[fahrbot-bot]

When did hell did Linux become a "fuck you don't touch the innards" system?

You probably meant "fuck you, don't touch the Lennart" I presume?

Let's compromise. I think we can *all* agree on: "fuck you, don't touch Lennart's innards"

Re:Soon you will all suffer!

[Desler]

Except he had nothing to do with this decision. It was chosen by the people who actually work on Firefox. If you had stepped up to help fix the ALSA bugs they ran in to then this wouldn't have happened. But you freeloaders in the peanut gallery do nothing but whine.

Mozilla is trying to push Pale Moon adoption

[secretagentmoof]

Since all the power users will bail at the 57pocalypse anyway, Mozilla is subtly trying to encourage earlier migration.

Re:Soon you will all suffer!

[tietokone-olmi]

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.

Re:Soon you will all suffer!

[tietokone-olmi]

I asked "exactly", and you answer with handwaving about some other library altogether. I suppose the answer is "it doesn't", then.

Re:PulseAudio, systemd

[LVSlushdat]

Next from "Poettering Labs", previously known as Redhat...... PoetterIX, All the software you've come to love, all rolled into one (previously known as Redhat/Debian) /s

(or *am* I being sarcastic?? wait and see....)

Switched to PulseAudio today - here's my story

[c0l0]

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.

Re:Switched to PulseAudio today - here's my story

[gweihir]

Sorry, if I can avoid Poetterix-contamination, I will.

Re:Switched to PulseAudio today - here's my story

[epyT-R]

So you equate your rather limited usecase and expectations with everyone elses needs, call them whiners, and then top it off with a nice appeal to antiquity fallacy.

Great.

Re:Switched to PulseAudio today - here's my story

[Foresto]

Your anecdote is pretty, but irrelevant. We already know that PulseAudio works for some people. It does not work for everyone.

(I am genuinely happy to know that this part of your life is easy, though.)

Re:Switched to PulseAudio today - here's my story

[preflex]

Bottom line, I guess: PulseAudio in 2017 _just effin' works_.

Just effin' works? You gotta' be effin' kiddin' me.

Pulse is _barely acceptable_ if you ONLY deal with stereo.
If you're using 5.1, or better yet, 7.1, you are sooooo fucked.

1. Pulseaudio has "enable_remixing" enabled by default.
This effectively ruins stereo content when played back on surround hardware. It sends L to L, SL, BL, and C. It sends R to R, SR, BR, and C. Do you see the problem here? C=L+R.
Bonus, it will also synthesize a LFE channel for you. LFE=L+R lowpassed at 200hz.

This can be disabled in the config file. I've never seen any pulseaudio manager with an option for it.

2. ZERO of the about 40 linux games which support surround in my steam library actually work properly in 7.1. (This might be steam runtime's fault). It invents channels that don't exist in a 7.1 configuration. Instead of SL and SR, there is a Front-Left-of-Center and, Front-Right-of-Center.

If remixing is disabled, you will have no output on SL and SR. If remixing is enabled, you will have incorrect output on SL and SR (A mix of the front and rear channels).

3. If you're trying to set up 5.1 over optical SPDIF, may god have mercy on your soul. Good luck getting it to output 5.1 DTS. I was only ever able to get stereo, but I hear it's doable.

Gentoo Won't Notice

[crow]

So if you're running Gentoo, the ebuilds should configure Firefox for you just like always, and you'll never notice this change. Or at least until version 54 when it really goes away and suddenly you're wondering why media-sound/pulseaudio is a required dependency for upgrading.

Re:--enable-alsa

[epyT-R]

For now.. Supposedly, this is to be removed in the future.

Mozilla further alienates it's user base

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla is largely used by tech-savvy people. I use it because I can mod the living daylights out of it, from about:config, to the way it acts, looks, performs using on-baord tweaks or add-ons. No other browser allows this level of customisation. Mozilla are losing users because they cannot leave well enough alone.

Re:Fake news...

[Foresto]

"This is simply not true."

It absolutely is true. ALSA is no longer an option in official or standard builds, and Mozilla does not support custom builds.

Even if they were supported, making custom builds of Firefox every time there's an update would be a waste of time, and sticking with a single custom build would be a foolish security risk. Easier and safer to switch browsers.

Also, Mozilla is planning to remove the compile-time option completely in Firefox 54, breaking ALSA systems even in custom builds.

Bye bye, Firefox.

Actions speak louder than words.

[Foresto]

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.

Re: Fire Slashdot Editors

[hackwrench]

The original submission was much more informative:
jbernardo writes: While trying to justify breaking audio on firefox for several linux users by making it depend on pulseaudio (and not even mentioning it in the release notes), Anthony Jones, who claims, among other proud achievements, to be "responsible for bringing Widevine DRM to Linux, Windows and Mac OSX", informs users that disabling telemetry will have consequences — "Telemetry informs our decisions. Turning it off is not without disadvantage."
The latest one is, as documented on the mentioned bug, that firefox no long has audio unless you have pulseaudio installed. Many bug reporters suggest that firefox telemetry is disabled by default on many distributions, and also that power users, who are the ones more likely to remove pulseaudio, are also the ones more likely to disable telemetry.
As for the pulseaudio dependence, apparently there was a "public" discussion on google groups, and it can be seen that the decision was indeed based on telemetry.
So, if for any reason you still use firefox, and want to have some hope it won't be broken for you in the future, enable all the spyware/telemetry.
https://slashdot.org/submissio...
I hope nothing got clobbered in my copy/paste. I tried previewing several times, but there can always be something I missed.

Re:Soon you will all suffer!

[MtHuurne]

The bugs are in the ALSA backend of Firefox, not in ALSA itself. The backend was apparently unmaintained for some time and now instead of fixing it they want to drop it.

patch for Firefox 52 - Fedora

[Thorfinn.au]

hi

download the source code .rpm
install in build directory
edit SOURCES/firefox-mozconfig
add
+ ac_add_options --disable-pulseaudio
+ ac_add_options --enable-alsa
delete
- ac_add_options --enable-pulseaudio
- ac_add_options --disable-alsa

build the firefox local rpm
remove distribution version of firefox and install local version of firefox
repeat after each update of firefox