I don't blame him for creating PulseAudio. I blame the distribution maintainers for having the poor judgment to make it the main sound system for so many distributions. It would be one thing to have a sane default like ALSA and then have PulseAudio available in the repositories for those who really want it.
For my friends who use Linux, the first thing I do whenever a new distro is installed is to check if it is using PulseAudio. If so, I remove it and replace it with ALSA. Suddenly issues related to audio playback go away and everything just magically works. Oh and they easily have a proper mixer without jumping through hoops, too, which is handy considering some of them are using 5.1 surround sound and/or bluetooth headphones.
The first headache I had with PulseAudio was when I tried to run something as a different (normal) user account and audio wouldn't work. There was no meaningful error message. There was only a "connection refused" error in the terminal. As it turns out, this is because PulseAudio has to be run by the user and it is recommended not to run it as a system-wide daemon. User A was running the user-daemon and User B was denied access to it as a consequence. They both could not run their own, well they could but it wouldn't work, as that'd be far too easy. Rather than screw around trying to get that to work I just used ALSA since PulseAudio didn't do anything I needed it to do that ALSA couldn't do with none of the hassle.
What would you think of the following hypothetical complaint?
I don't blame him for creating X. I blame the distribution maintainers for having the poor judgment to make it the main interface for so many distributions. It would be one thing to have a sane default like text consoles and then have X available in the repositories for those who really want it.
For my friends who use Linux, the first thing I do whenever a new distro is installed is to check if it is using X. If so, I remove it and replace it with screen. Suddenly issues related to mice go away and everything just magically works. Oh and they easily have a proper task switch without jumping through hoops, too, which is handy considering some of them are using international keyboards and/or aalib.
The first headache I had with X was when I tried to run something as a different (normal) user account and graphics wouldn't work. There was no meaningful error message. There was only a "cannot open display" error in the terminal. As it turns out, this is because X has to be run by the user and it is recommended not to run it as a system-wide server. User A was running the X server and User B was denied access to it as a consequence. They both could not run their own, well they could but it wouldn't work, as that'd be far too easy. Rather than screw around trying to get that to work I just used screen since X didn't do anything I needed it to do that screen couldn't do with none of the hassle.
Surely you know enough about X to understand the errors and mis-diagnoses made in the third paragraph. Well, they are exactly analogous to your own error and misdiagnosis about PulseAudio. First, the error message is actually very meaningful. It's telling you it can't talk to the server. So right away you should know to check that the server is running, that the app is trying to talk to the right server, and that it has permission. But you instead mis-diagnose that you need another server running and waste time trying to set up a configuration that won't work.
You'd have that same attitude toward X that you have toward PulseAudio if X was as new and unfamiliar to you as PulseAudio is.
PulseAudio is a middleman standing between the applicating wanting to play sound, and ALSA.
So is dmix. I explained this to you before.
How exactly is that going to fix an inherent flaw in the underlying ALSA system? Hint: it will not and cannot.
You are conflating ALSA, the clean efficient kernel API for using sound hardware, with ALSA the user-space API that adds on a complex system of plugins that can be inserted in place of, or before, sending sound to the hardware. It's this complex plugin system (and the mixer built on top of it) that is inherently flawed and has fundamental limitations. There's no dynamic routing or hot-plugging for starters (and I mean while an application is running). Fixing these limitations requires a rewrite.
If there are such horrible problems with Dmix [...], that kind of development effort should be put towards fixing Dmix
Dmix is being fixed, via a rewrite called 'pulseaudio'. You may have heard of it.
...they want their proprietary format back. Another GD-ROM style abortion? Hopefully they don't think that the awkward size will prevent piracy. Sega made the same mistake, until pirates just reduced video quality on FMV and fit it the games on a standard 800mb CD-ROM (old, I know).
Uh, you do realize this is probably the exact same tech as Blu-ray but without paying for the trademark, right? And even if it's not just Blu-ray, don't you realize that ALL consoles use proprietary formatting in their discs anyway?
Seriously, I don't get why you're portraying this as such an extreme negative. If you tried two consoles, one with proprietary discs and the other without, you wouldn't be able to tell which is which from how much fun you're having... Because there is no difference.
I really hoped they would step up to the big boys in console gaming
You'd think differently if English didn't allow you to use the words 'broke', 'stole', and 'attack' to describe their actions. Stop being controlled by language.
Yes, I'm sure it has nothing to do with Apple's huge TV advertising budget and presence of physical products in stores. Linux doesn't have high market share just because you're not in charge of naming the releases.
If you're going to lecture people about understanding what they're talking about, you'd better understand it, or you'll just make yourself look like a contentious idiot.
And on how many distros does sharing the sound card between different accounts (you know, that thing I was actually talking about) work by default?
Considering this is a default kernel setting and all distros are using a Linux kernel this figure would approach 100%.
No, it is not a "default kernel setting". It is not even a kernel setting.
Simply put, if your kernel has ALSA support it has dmix.
Uh, no. There is no in-kernel mixing in Linux. If you want in-kernel mixing, install FreeBSD. The Linux kernel's sound system is designed for a single process to open a sound device exclusively (unless there's hardware mixing). Dmix is a plugin for the user-space ALSA library that makes the first process to open the sound device create a shared memory segment that other processes will map into their address space. This shared space is then used to coordinate mixing. Don't believe me? I'll cite code. Notice it isn't kernel code. Also notice how it's located the "first instance". And the error message if it fails? "unable to create IPC shm instance". IPC = inter-process communication. shm = shared memory.
Don't like running a sound server? Then don't run dmix. It does the same thing as Pulseaudio, only without a single dedicated process for mixing. It gathers up sound output from every process through shared memory and has one process mix it all.
Dmix has no purpose other than to allow multiple sounds to be played simultaneously. Dmix does not care about whether they came from multiple accounts.
Yes it does. Or more accurately, the shared memory segment it uses does have access rights associated with it. If you don't believe me, then explain this. Maybe there are a few common distros that share the dmix key with everyone in the audio group. All I know is, Ubuntu didn't do it, and it's a bad idea for security and reliability to create backdoors around user isolation.
If you had decency you would be embarassed that you are entering into this discussion without knowing basic facts like that. You would also admit that you shouldn't be spouting information that's more than six years out-of-date, that this makes your opinions about ALSA invalid. That's if you cared about truth and weren't just trying to posture and hand-wave.
Your rant is a better description of you than me. Except that what you're saying about ALSA isn't merely outdated; it's just plain wrong and has never been right. My description of ALSA is accurate and current.
That's a terrible default behavior. If the other user's desktop and applications go away when you switch to your account, why should their sound stay? It's inconsistent. I don't want to hear a random ad suddenly at high volume because somebody else left a webpage open that cycles through ads and eventually plays one with sound. A person should be able to use sound without logging into other people's accounts and closing their programs first.
For a user to have access to play sound, you must first add them to the audio group. If a user only ever connects remotely through something like SSH, then obviously you wouldn't give them permissions to play sounds on your hardware.
Is this even an honest mistake at this point? Are you really that stupid? I was not talking about SSH. I did not even mention SSH. I'm talking about logging in as a second user on the physical
The thing is, the poster above was just using pulseaudio as a single example of a common problem with multiple faucets of all Linux distros.
Think of it from your mother's perspective. How would she feel if she bought a new computer and the audio didn't work all the time? Or if she couldn't always watch DVDs on it? Or if she had to do something more complicated than click on system preferences to adjust a setting... What's a terminal again? And why don't this computer recognize my *insert peripheral here*???
Not everyone wants to tinker with their desktops. You know how you feel when your motherboard dies? That is how they feel when their computer won't do something simple and they can't figure out how to fix it.
That was my whole point, though. Software like Pulseaudio and Network Manager are needed to provide a user-friendly desktop experience. But long-time Linux-using luddites are often complaining that the old way is better. They might be right, at first. But they go as far as saying the new software will never work and shouldn't be used or developed.
The problem is, they have no vision. They lack the ability to imagine how the software could make things better in the future. Instead they point to bugs in the current version, or sometimes even in past versions, and use it to justify their opposition to the very idea of software that performs that function. Meanwhile, their justification crumbles with every bugfix but they won't change their position.
Sometimes I think these people are just bitter that they wasted too much time trying to get an early version to work well, and now they're trying to get revenge on the inanimate piece of software, even if it works fine today.
Oh, and one final thing: ALSA is broken for user switching. Whichever user grabs the sound device keeps it, and keeps playing audio while switched to another user. All other users are locked out of sound. That is completely broken behavior, and PulseAudio fixes it. Audio is now controlled by the current user, and all other users are muted.
Someone else already pointed out that dmix has been enabled by default in ALSA for at least six years now. It was available prior to that.
And on how many distros does sharing the sound card between different accounts (you know, that thing I was actually talking about) work by default?
I have no problems with ALSA and multiple users. If I play three different mp3s from three different user accounts, all three mp3s play at the same time. Not really the best way to hear a song but the point is that it works and works automatically.
That's a terrible default behavior. If the other user's desktop and applications go away when you switch to your account, why should their sound stay? It's inconsistent. I don't want to hear a random ad suddenly at high volume because somebody else left a webpage open that cycles through ads and eventually plays one with sound. A person should be able to use sound without logging into other people's accounts and closing their programs first.
There is no need and no reason to mute audio from anyone just because someone else is also using it.
Then why have a separate desktop session? Why not have all users in the same session, on the same X server? Just provide a switch that controls which user the launcher menus open programs for, and let the current user see everyone's programs all at once. At least then, you'd have convenient control of any programs playing sound you don't want to hear.
In today's desktop environments, we're effectively 'muting' the video when we switch users. The audio should mute too. The whole point is that we're getting somebody else's stuff out of our way, but preserving it so it will still be there when they're back. If their sound is playing, it isn't out of the way. I want to play my own sound without also hearing the sound of someone who isn't even present anymore.
Needlessly muting users just for the privilege of having your sound go through a redundant layer of software is what I would call "completely broken behavior".
This is just begging the question. Referring to it repeatedly as "needless", "redudant" and "broken" isn't the same as supporting those claims with arguments.
My experience with Pulseaudio on a friend's system is where I have had problems with multiple users.
No you did not have problems with multiple users. At least not according to what you describe below...
On a Fedora (Fedora 14) box Pulseaudio is the default sound system. For security reasons we set up a separate, restricted user account for Wine. Wine in its separate account had no audio capability whatsoever even though his normal account did.
It sounds like you are saying it was the specific wine user that had no audio, rather than the second concurrent login that had no audio. If that's the case, then this isn't a multiple user bug.
Since I have never personally used Pulseaudio this is where I discovered that unlike most daemons, it does not run system-wide. Each user must run their own instance of it.
X doesn't run system-wide either. Each user has their own instance of it. OK, that's a special case since it starts as root before user login and doesn't run as the user, but that's being fixed for security. Actually, there are a lot of daemons that run per-user on a typical Linux desktop. It's not inherently a bad thing.
His main user had Pulseaudio start up automatically upon login. The user account we
Oh, and one final thing: ALSA is broken for user switching. Whichever user grabs the sound device keeps it, and keeps playing audio while switched to another user. All other users are locked out of sound. That is completely broken behavior, and PulseAudio fixes it. Audio is now controlled by the current user, and all other users are muted.
Welcome to... oh about 2005 when ALSA enabled dmix by default so that people who have sound cards without hardware mixing (most of them) can still have any number of apps open and playing sound independently. Revolutionary!
And then I'll welcome you to Windows XP in 2001, which handles sound correctly alongside multiple logins, unlike plain ALSA in Linux. I don't want desktop Linux to be inferior to a decade-old Microsoft OS. Do you?
PulseAudio has worked well for more than a year now. The problem is, people got used to blaming PulseAudio for problems back when it was broken, and now they just can't break the habit.
But sound has always been broken, until recently. Sound finally "just works" now thanks to PulseAudio. If you plug in USB speakers or headphones, you can use them right away. If you pair a Bluetooth headset, you can use that too, all through a GUI. And if you think those aren't common activities and don't count, I have to disagree. Adding external sound devices is more common than you think, and will only increase in popularity. If a new device configures itself in half a second, that's a good experience (better than Windows, which wants to make a big deal every time it sees new hardware). If the system does nothing until you edit a config file, and you have to restart applications to change the sound device they use, that's a bad experience.
Oh, and one final thing: ALSA is broken for user switching. Whichever user grabs the sound device keeps it, and keeps playing audio while switched to another user. All other users are locked out of sound. That is completely broken behavior, and PulseAudio fixes it. Audio is now controlled by the current user, and all other users are muted.
Why are you typing "http://"? It's just a time-wasting obsessive compulsive habit. Second, if the suggestions are useless, just keep typing. They don't get in the way of text entry, and the first moment the right suggestion pops up, you're done. That moment will come sooner and sooner with each time you visit the site, because it learns what sites you're likely to visit based on what you type. And finally, if I type 'g', I get a damn useful suggested website that I visit all the time. What do you get?
The location bar has accepted search terms since forever. Not providing search autocomplete in a search field is bad UI. On the other hand, typing in URLs is bad UI. But if the browser happens to receive a URL from the user, going there is definitely good UI behavior.
Except that the clear, objective data show the temperature rise LEADING the CO2 level increases.
This is a false dichotomy. Your claim in no way rules out or diminishes the position that CO2 causes warming. Both can be true at the same time.
There are other explanations that more clearly fit the data. Unfortunately, they lead to conclusions that do not give credence to increased governmental controls.
There's no shortage of valid justifications for government regulations such that people have to make up fake reasons to justify the government's existence. Also, no significant group supports government regulation just for the sake of government regulation. There's always an objective, such as promoting a standard of living, protecting consumer rights, or ensuring a competitive market. I'm sure there are some corporations that have a financial interest in emission regulations, but not enough to explain why a majority of climate scientists would feign a consensus that isn't supported by evidence.
On the other side, there are plenty of people that want to deregulate purely for the sake of deregulating. They're called libertarians (or republicans), and they rationalize away the need for regulations because they dislike government. They don't accept conclusions that would validate increased government controls.
If you liked Ocarina of Time, then what did you think of Majora's Mask? It's the same game engine, but I found its world to be much more expansive and detailed. Characters didn't just stand in one place waiting for you to interact with them. They moved around and had their own lives that you could learn about and influence. And the world was so sidequest-heavy that I didn't feel like I was on a prescribed linear path through the plot. I'd just do a bunch of sidequests and one of them would eventually give me what I need to reach the next area.
Ocarina of Time's time travel was basically a variant of the dark world system from Link to the Past with its two parallel worlds, but less interesting because you couldn't go from one world to another at any position on the world map, so there was less puzzle and exploration potential. OoT was overall very good, and established how the whole genre should work in 3D, but I think it has lost its uniqueness today as many comparable games have been created since its release. MM, on the other hand, is still unique today.
Anyway, I'd guess that it's a fluke that you only liked Ocarina, between it, Majora's Mask, and Wind Waker. They are similar games and should have similar appeal, but they're involved enough that you really have to get into them to enjoy them. There's an element of chance to that, and other things going on in your life can be a distraction.
Zelda 1 is kind of primitive today and the puzzle elements are pretty minimal so I can understand not liking it on those grounds. And Zelda 2 is of course a totally different game with a different appeal. Link to the Past still holds up well today, so yeah, it's a good game to try next.
As far as Jpeg and PDF go - I did *not* claim they weren't royalty free, I claimed they had patents attached to them.
Then what was your point? If that's what you claimed, it would have been a non-sequitor. The problem people have with H.264 is the royalties, so pointing out JPEG proves nothing. And you should have known the point of contention already. You have reading comprehension problems.
FYI, something isn't patent encumbered just because a patent exists. It's patent encumbered when it is encumbered by a patent. Do I really have to explain this? There's also a word for when something is merely patented. That word is 'patented'. I shouldn't have to explain this.
Anyway, so, having been called on deliberately conflating open source and open standard
I did no such thing. I never treated "open source" and "open standard" as if they were the same thing. Which is what conflating would be. Referring to two different things in the same sentence is not conflating.
and citing yourself that there's no fixed definition (and that royalties are not incompatible with the term) you are not restating that the MPEG LA's terms are "incompatible with open source in general and the GPL specifically" and have left out the open standards part, whereas just a couple of posts ago you were claiming it was also incompatible with open standards too [...]
Jeez, calm down, take a breather, and wait for your emotional outrage to subside. You're not thinking straight. What I was saying is that even if I accepted your position that "open standard" has nothing to do with royalty-free use (which I don't), it actually doesn't help your argument or undermine mine any.
Aside from that, by the principle of charity, you should interpret a person's words by what they probably meant, and not try to twist them into something ridiculous you can launch ad hominem attacks against. If somebody says something that makes sense according to the common definition of a word, you shouldn't attack them because it can be reinterpreted into an incorrect statement. If you said cars had steering wheels, I wouldn't say you were wrong because the compartment of an elevator can be called a car and doesn't have one.
I'm not asking you to provide citations, I'm asking you to state what parts of my claims you actually disagree with so I can back them up. I don't want to write a full and expansive term paper on every last detail of my position.
You want a citation? OK, here's a citation. You're the one trying to use the minority definition of what "open standard" means.
Let's take a look at all those definitions.
Definition explicitly allowing royalties:
ITU-T definition: "IPRs essential to implement the standard to be licensed to all applicants on a worldwide, non-discriminatory basis, either (1) for free and under other reasonable terms and conditions or (2) on reasonable terms and conditions (which may include monetary compensation). Negotiations are left to the parties concerned and are performed outside the SDO."
Definition where royalty-free implementation might be an implied requirement:
Venezuelan law definition: "available to everybody for their implementation in free software" (I'd check the cited sources if they were in English)
Organization that doesn't define "open standard" at all (instead defining "open process"):
Definitions where royalty-free implementation and use is an explicit part of the definition, though degrees of openness are also recognized, so a compromise might be accepted if no standard is available that fully matches the definition:
South African Government definition: "The intellectual rights required to implement the standard (e.g.essential patent claims) are irrevocably available, without any royalties attached."
New Zealand official interoperability framework definition: "accessible to everyone free of charge: no discrimination between users, and no payment or other considerations should be required as a condition to use the standard"
European Union definition: "The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis"
Danish government definition: "An open standard is accessible to everyone free of charge (i.e. there is no discrimination between users, and no payment or other considerations are required as a condition of use of the standard)"
French law definition: "any interoperable data format whose specifications are public and without any restriction in their access or implementation"
Spanish law definition: "its use is not subject to the payment of any intellectual [copyright] or industrial [patents and trademarks] property right"
Bruce Perens' definition: "No Royalty: Open Standards are free for all to implement, with no royalty or fee."
Microsoft's definition: "Let's look at what an open standard means: 'open' refers to it being royalty-free, while 'standard' means a technology approved by formalised committees that are open to participation by all interested parties and operate on a consensus basis."
Open Source Initiative's definition: "Patents: All patents essential to implementation of the standard MUST: be licensed under royalty-free terms for unrestricted use, or be covered by a promise of non-assertion when practiced by open source software"
World Wide Web Consortium's definition: "clear IPR rules for implementation, allowing open source development in the case of Internet/Web technologies" Also, "The W3C Patent Policy is designed to [...] Promote the widespread implementation of those Recommendations on a Royalty-Free (RF) basis" (link)
Digital Standards Organization definition: "The patent
MPEG LA's licensing terms are incompatible with both open standards and open software. They are anti-openness.
MPEG LA is trying to intimidate anyone who would use a competing codec to just use theirs and pay up, by promising to form a patent pool and sue anyone using a competing codec. That is extortion.
MPEG LA is an association between many corporations colluding to suppress competition. That is a cartel.
If you can't dispute any of the above claims, then it is perfectly fair to call MPEG LA an anti-openness extortion cartel. Not everything is biased just because it makes someone sound bad. It's possible that they really are that bad. You need to re-examine some of your beliefs.
The issue isn't over whether a technology is patented at all. The problem is with the royalty requirement, which is incompatible with open source development and distribution. Firefox is 100% royalty-free right now. Implementing H.264 would be completely unprecedented in Firefox.
If you can't watch h.264 on your Linux box, you're doing it wrong. Linux users don't need their hand held.
Do you think Linux isn't a legitimate competitor to Windows and that it never can be? Because that's what I'm getting from your statement. In this day and age, an non-expert can buy a non-Windows (and non-Apple) computing device, whether it's an Android tablet or a Linux computer, and they can have a good computing experience. It's not just a hobbyist OS anymore.
Users shouldn't have to track down software of questionable legality or be cut off from large parts of the Internet, but that's what Microsoft's shenanigans will lead to. If they really wanted to give users more choice, they'd add WebM to IE.
They're absolutely not supporting choice. They're trying to make it so if you're a Linux user, the Internet won't work. Just more of the same anti-competitive tactics.
Slashdot Mirror
I hear that release comes with a free Slurpee.
That's good.
I don't blame him for creating PulseAudio. I blame the distribution maintainers for having the poor judgment to make it the main sound system for so many distributions. It would be one thing to have a sane default like ALSA and then have PulseAudio available in the repositories for those who really want it.
For my friends who use Linux, the first thing I do whenever a new distro is installed is to check if it is using PulseAudio. If so, I remove it and replace it with ALSA. Suddenly issues related to audio playback go away and everything just magically works. Oh and they easily have a proper mixer without jumping through hoops, too, which is handy considering some of them are using 5.1 surround sound and/or bluetooth headphones.
The first headache I had with PulseAudio was when I tried to run something as a different (normal) user account and audio wouldn't work. There was no meaningful error message. There was only a "connection refused" error in the terminal. As it turns out, this is because PulseAudio has to be run by the user and it is recommended not to run it as a system-wide daemon. User A was running the user-daemon and User B was denied access to it as a consequence. They both could not run their own, well they could but it wouldn't work, as that'd be far too easy. Rather than screw around trying to get that to work I just used ALSA since PulseAudio didn't do anything I needed it to do that ALSA couldn't do with none of the hassle.
What would you think of the following hypothetical complaint?
I don't blame him for creating X. I blame the distribution maintainers for having the poor judgment to make it the main interface for so many distributions. It would be one thing to have a sane default like text consoles and then have X available in the repositories for those who really want it.
For my friends who use Linux, the first thing I do whenever a new distro is installed is to check if it is using X. If so, I remove it and replace it with screen. Suddenly issues related to mice go away and everything just magically works. Oh and they easily have a proper task switch without jumping through hoops, too, which is handy considering some of them are using international keyboards and/or aalib.
The first headache I had with X was when I tried to run something as a different (normal) user account and graphics wouldn't work. There was no meaningful error message. There was only a "cannot open display" error in the terminal. As it turns out, this is because X has to be run by the user and it is recommended not to run it as a system-wide server. User A was running the X server and User B was denied access to it as a consequence. They both could not run their own, well they could but it wouldn't work, as that'd be far too easy. Rather than screw around trying to get that to work I just used screen since X didn't do anything I needed it to do that screen couldn't do with none of the hassle.
Surely you know enough about X to understand the errors and mis-diagnoses made in the third paragraph. Well, they are exactly analogous to your own error and misdiagnosis about PulseAudio. First, the error message is actually very meaningful. It's telling you it can't talk to the server. So right away you should know to check that the server is running, that the app is trying to talk to the right server, and that it has permission. But you instead mis-diagnose that you need another server running and waste time trying to set up a configuration that won't work.
You'd have that same attitude toward X that you have toward PulseAudio if X was as new and unfamiliar to you as PulseAudio is.
Hello again.
PulseAudio is a middleman standing between the applicating wanting to play sound, and ALSA.
So is dmix. I explained this to you before.
How exactly is that going to fix an inherent flaw in the underlying ALSA system? Hint: it will not and cannot.
You are conflating ALSA, the clean efficient kernel API for using sound hardware, with ALSA the user-space API that adds on a complex system of plugins that can be inserted in place of, or before, sending sound to the hardware. It's this complex plugin system (and the mixer built on top of it) that is inherently flawed and has fundamental limitations. There's no dynamic routing or hot-plugging for starters (and I mean while an application is running). Fixing these limitations requires a rewrite.
If there are such horrible problems with Dmix [...], that kind of development effort should be put towards fixing Dmix
Dmix is being fixed, via a rewrite called 'pulseaudio'. You may have heard of it.
...they want their proprietary format back. Another GD-ROM style abortion? Hopefully they don't think that the awkward size will prevent piracy. Sega made the same mistake, until pirates just reduced video quality on FMV and fit it the games on a standard 800mb CD-ROM (old, I know).
Uh, you do realize this is probably the exact same tech as Blu-ray but without paying for the trademark, right? And even if it's not just Blu-ray, don't you realize that ALL consoles use proprietary formatting in their discs anyway?
Seriously, I don't get why you're portraying this as such an extreme negative. If you tried two consoles, one with proprietary discs and the other without, you wouldn't be able to tell which is which from how much fun you're having... Because there is no difference.
I really hoped they would step up to the big boys in console gaming
How?
You'd think differently if English didn't allow you to use the words 'broke', 'stole', and 'attack' to describe their actions. Stop being controlled by language.
Yes, I'm sure it has nothing to do with Apple's huge TV advertising budget and presence of physical products in stores. Linux doesn't have high market share just because you're not in charge of naming the releases.
If you're going to lecture people about understanding what they're talking about, you'd better understand it, or you'll just make yourself look like a contentious idiot.
Considering this is a default kernel setting and all distros are using a Linux kernel this figure would approach 100%.
No, it is not a "default kernel setting". It is not even a kernel setting.
Simply put, if your kernel has ALSA support it has dmix.
Uh, no. There is no in-kernel mixing in Linux. If you want in-kernel mixing, install FreeBSD. The Linux kernel's sound system is designed for a single process to open a sound device exclusively (unless there's hardware mixing). Dmix is a plugin for the user-space ALSA library that makes the first process to open the sound device create a shared memory segment that other processes will map into their address space. This shared space is then used to coordinate mixing. Don't believe me? I'll cite code. Notice it isn't kernel code. Also notice how it's located the "first instance". And the error message if it fails? "unable to create IPC shm instance". IPC = inter-process communication. shm = shared memory.
Don't like running a sound server? Then don't run dmix. It does the same thing as Pulseaudio, only without a single dedicated process for mixing. It gathers up sound output from every process through shared memory and has one process mix it all.
Dmix has no purpose other than to allow multiple sounds to be played simultaneously. Dmix does not care about whether they came from multiple accounts.
Yes it does. Or more accurately, the shared memory segment it uses does have access rights associated with it. If you don't believe me, then explain this. Maybe there are a few common distros that share the dmix key with everyone in the audio group. All I know is, Ubuntu didn't do it, and it's a bad idea for security and reliability to create backdoors around user isolation.
If you had decency you would be embarassed that you are entering into this discussion without knowing basic facts like that. You would also admit that you shouldn't be spouting information that's more than six years out-of-date, that this makes your opinions about ALSA invalid. That's if you cared about truth and weren't just trying to posture and hand-wave.
Your rant is a better description of you than me. Except that what you're saying about ALSA isn't merely outdated; it's just plain wrong and has never been right. My description of ALSA is accurate and current.
For a user to have access to play sound, you must first add them to the audio group. If a user only ever connects remotely through something like SSH, then obviously you wouldn't give them permissions to play sounds on your hardware.
Is this even an honest mistake at this point? Are you really that stupid? I was not talking about SSH. I did not even mention SSH. I'm talking about logging in as a second user on the physical
The thing is, the poster above was just using pulseaudio as a single example of a common problem with multiple faucets of all Linux distros.
Think of it from your mother's perspective. How would she feel if she bought a new computer and the audio didn't work all the time? Or if she couldn't always watch DVDs on it? Or if she had to do something more complicated than click on system preferences to adjust a setting... What's a terminal again? And why don't this computer recognize my *insert peripheral here*???
Not everyone wants to tinker with their desktops. You know how you feel when your motherboard dies? That is how they feel when their computer won't do something simple and they can't figure out how to fix it.
That was my whole point, though. Software like Pulseaudio and Network Manager are needed to provide a user-friendly desktop experience. But long-time Linux-using luddites are often complaining that the old way is better. They might be right, at first. But they go as far as saying the new software will never work and shouldn't be used or developed.
The problem is, they have no vision. They lack the ability to imagine how the software could make things better in the future. Instead they point to bugs in the current version, or sometimes even in past versions, and use it to justify their opposition to the very idea of software that performs that function. Meanwhile, their justification crumbles with every bugfix but they won't change their position.
Sometimes I think these people are just bitter that they wasted too much time trying to get an early version to work well, and now they're trying to get revenge on the inanimate piece of software, even if it works fine today.
Someone else already pointed out that dmix has been enabled by default in ALSA for at least six years now. It was available prior to that.
And on how many distros does sharing the sound card between different accounts (you know, that thing I was actually talking about) work by default?
I have no problems with ALSA and multiple users. If I play three different mp3s from three different user accounts, all three mp3s play at the same time. Not really the best way to hear a song but the point is that it works and works automatically.
That's a terrible default behavior. If the other user's desktop and applications go away when you switch to your account, why should their sound stay? It's inconsistent. I don't want to hear a random ad suddenly at high volume because somebody else left a webpage open that cycles through ads and eventually plays one with sound. A person should be able to use sound without logging into other people's accounts and closing their programs first.
There is no need and no reason to mute audio from anyone just because someone else is also using it.
Then why have a separate desktop session? Why not have all users in the same session, on the same X server? Just provide a switch that controls which user the launcher menus open programs for, and let the current user see everyone's programs all at once. At least then, you'd have convenient control of any programs playing sound you don't want to hear.
In today's desktop environments, we're effectively 'muting' the video when we switch users. The audio should mute too. The whole point is that we're getting somebody else's stuff out of our way, but preserving it so it will still be there when they're back. If their sound is playing, it isn't out of the way. I want to play my own sound without also hearing the sound of someone who isn't even present anymore.
Needlessly muting users just for the privilege of having your sound go through a redundant layer of software is what I would call "completely broken behavior".
This is just begging the question. Referring to it repeatedly as "needless", "redudant" and "broken" isn't the same as supporting those claims with arguments.
My experience with Pulseaudio on a friend's system is where I have had problems with multiple users.
No you did not have problems with multiple users. At least not according to what you describe below...
On a Fedora (Fedora 14) box Pulseaudio is the default sound system. For security reasons we set up a separate, restricted user account for Wine. Wine in its separate account had no audio capability whatsoever even though his normal account did.
It sounds like you are saying it was the specific wine user that had no audio, rather than the second concurrent login that had no audio. If that's the case, then this isn't a multiple user bug.
Since I have never personally used Pulseaudio this is where I discovered that unlike most daemons, it does not run system-wide. Each user must run their own instance of it.
X doesn't run system-wide either. Each user has their own instance of it. OK, that's a special case since it starts as root before user login and doesn't run as the user, but that's being fixed for security. Actually, there are a lot of daemons that run per-user on a typical Linux desktop. It's not inherently a bad thing.
His main user had Pulseaudio start up automatically upon login. The user account we
Oh, and one final thing: ALSA is broken for user switching. Whichever user grabs the sound device keeps it, and keeps playing audio while switched to another user. All other users are locked out of sound. That is completely broken behavior, and PulseAudio fixes it. Audio is now controlled by the current user, and all other users are muted.
Welcome to... oh about 2005 when ALSA enabled dmix by default so that people who have sound cards without hardware mixing (most of them) can still have any number of apps open and playing sound independently. Revolutionary!
And then I'll welcome you to Windows XP in 2001, which handles sound correctly alongside multiple logins, unlike plain ALSA in Linux. I don't want desktop Linux to be inferior to a decade-old Microsoft OS. Do you?
PulseAudio has worked well for more than a year now. The problem is, people got used to blaming PulseAudio for problems back when it was broken, and now they just can't break the habit.
But sound has always been broken, until recently. Sound finally "just works" now thanks to PulseAudio. If you plug in USB speakers or headphones, you can use them right away. If you pair a Bluetooth headset, you can use that too, all through a GUI. And if you think those aren't common activities and don't count, I have to disagree. Adding external sound devices is more common than you think, and will only increase in popularity. If a new device configures itself in half a second, that's a good experience (better than Windows, which wants to make a big deal every time it sees new hardware). If the system does nothing until you edit a config file, and you have to restart applications to change the sound device they use, that's a bad experience.
Oh, and one final thing: ALSA is broken for user switching. Whichever user grabs the sound device keeps it, and keeps playing audio while switched to another user. All other users are locked out of sound. That is completely broken behavior, and PulseAudio fixes it. Audio is now controlled by the current user, and all other users are muted.
Why are you typing "http://"? It's just a time-wasting obsessive compulsive habit. Second, if the suggestions are useless, just keep typing. They don't get in the way of text entry, and the first moment the right suggestion pops up, you're done. That moment will come sooner and sooner with each time you visit the site, because it learns what sites you're likely to visit based on what you type. And finally, if I type 'g', I get a damn useful suggested website that I visit all the time. What do you get?
The location bar has accepted search terms since forever. Not providing search autocomplete in a search field is bad UI. On the other hand, typing in URLs is bad UI. But if the browser happens to receive a URL from the user, going there is definitely good UI behavior.
Except that the clear, objective data show the temperature rise LEADING the CO2 level increases.
This is a false dichotomy. Your claim in no way rules out or diminishes the position that CO2 causes warming. Both can be true at the same time.
There are other explanations that more clearly fit the data. Unfortunately, they lead to conclusions that do not give credence to increased governmental controls.
There's no shortage of valid justifications for government regulations such that people have to make up fake reasons to justify the government's existence. Also, no significant group supports government regulation just for the sake of government regulation. There's always an objective, such as promoting a standard of living, protecting consumer rights, or ensuring a competitive market. I'm sure there are some corporations that have a financial interest in emission regulations, but not enough to explain why a majority of climate scientists would feign a consensus that isn't supported by evidence.
On the other side, there are plenty of people that want to deregulate purely for the sake of deregulating. They're called libertarians (or republicans), and they rationalize away the need for regulations because they dislike government. They don't accept conclusions that would validate increased government controls.
Canonical has diverted $0 from Gnome, unless you use RIAA logic where theoretical lost sales equate to theft.
If you liked Ocarina of Time, then what did you think of Majora's Mask? It's the same game engine, but I found its world to be much more expansive and detailed. Characters didn't just stand in one place waiting for you to interact with them. They moved around and had their own lives that you could learn about and influence. And the world was so sidequest-heavy that I didn't feel like I was on a prescribed linear path through the plot. I'd just do a bunch of sidequests and one of them would eventually give me what I need to reach the next area.
Ocarina of Time's time travel was basically a variant of the dark world system from Link to the Past with its two parallel worlds, but less interesting because you couldn't go from one world to another at any position on the world map, so there was less puzzle and exploration potential. OoT was overall very good, and established how the whole genre should work in 3D, but I think it has lost its uniqueness today as many comparable games have been created since its release. MM, on the other hand, is still unique today.
Anyway, I'd guess that it's a fluke that you only liked Ocarina, between it, Majora's Mask, and Wind Waker. They are similar games and should have similar appeal, but they're involved enough that you really have to get into them to enjoy them. There's an element of chance to that, and other things going on in your life can be a distraction.
Zelda 1 is kind of primitive today and the puzzle elements are pretty minimal so I can understand not liking it on those grounds. And Zelda 2 is of course a totally different game with a different appeal. Link to the Past still holds up well today, so yeah, it's a good game to try next.
Jeez, can't a Democrat get credit for wanting to tax the rich these days?
As far as Jpeg and PDF go - I did *not* claim they weren't royalty free, I claimed they had patents attached to them.
Then what was your point? If that's what you claimed, it would have been a non-sequitor. The problem people have with H.264 is the royalties, so pointing out JPEG proves nothing. And you should have known the point of contention already. You have reading comprehension problems.
FYI, something isn't patent encumbered just because a patent exists. It's patent encumbered when it is encumbered by a patent. Do I really have to explain this? There's also a word for when something is merely patented. That word is 'patented'. I shouldn't have to explain this.
Anyway, so, having been called on deliberately conflating open source and open standard
I did no such thing. I never treated "open source" and "open standard" as if they were the same thing. Which is what conflating would be. Referring to two different things in the same sentence is not conflating.
and citing yourself that there's no fixed definition (and that royalties are not incompatible with the term) you are not restating that the MPEG LA's terms are "incompatible with open source in general and the GPL specifically" and have left out the open standards part, whereas just a couple of posts ago you were claiming it was also incompatible with open standards too [...]
Jeez, calm down, take a breather, and wait for your emotional outrage to subside. You're not thinking straight. What I was saying is that even if I accepted your position that "open standard" has nothing to do with royalty-free use (which I don't), it actually doesn't help your argument or undermine mine any.
Aside from that, by the principle of charity, you should interpret a person's words by what they probably meant, and not try to twist them into something ridiculous you can launch ad hominem attacks against. If somebody says something that makes sense according to the common definition of a word, you shouldn't attack them because it can be reinterpreted into an incorrect statement. If you said cars had steering wheels, I wouldn't say you were wrong because the compartment of an elevator can be called a car and doesn't have one.
I'm not asking you to provide citations, I'm asking you to state what parts of my claims you actually disagree with so I can back them up. I don't want to write a full and expansive term paper on every last detail of my position.
You want a citation? OK, here's a citation. You're the one trying to use the minority definition of what "open standard" means.
Let's take a look at all those definitions.
Definition explicitly allowing royalties:
Definition where royalty-free implementation might be an implied requirement:
Organization that doesn't define "open standard" at all (instead defining "open process"):
Definitions where royalty-free implementation and use is an explicit part of the definition, though degrees of openness are also recognized, so a compromise might be accepted if no standard is available that fully matches the definition:
Definitions explicitly requiring royalty-free implementation:
MPEG LA's licensing terms are incompatible with both open standards and open software. They are anti-openness.
MPEG LA is trying to intimidate anyone who would use a competing codec to just use theirs and pay up, by promising to form a patent pool and sue anyone using a competing codec. That is extortion.
MPEG LA is an association between many corporations colluding to suppress competition. That is a cartel.
If you can't dispute any of the above claims, then it is perfectly fair to call MPEG LA an anti-openness extortion cartel. Not everything is biased just because it makes someone sound bad. It's possible that they really are that bad. You need to re-examine some of your beliefs.
The issue isn't over whether a technology is patented at all. The problem is with the royalty requirement, which is incompatible with open source development and distribution. Firefox is 100% royalty-free right now. Implementing H.264 would be completely unprecedented in Firefox.
If you can't watch h.264 on your Linux box, you're doing it wrong. Linux users don't need their hand held.
Do you think Linux isn't a legitimate competitor to Windows and that it never can be? Because that's what I'm getting from your statement. In this day and age, an non-expert can buy a non-Windows (and non-Apple) computing device, whether it's an Android tablet or a Linux computer, and they can have a good computing experience. It's not just a hobbyist OS anymore.
Users shouldn't have to track down software of questionable legality or be cut off from large parts of the Internet, but that's what Microsoft's shenanigans will lead to. If they really wanted to give users more choice, they'd add WebM to IE.
It's not Microsoft's fault that your browser is intentionally not supporting H.264
Yes it is. Microsoft is member of the anti-openness extortion cartel that is blocking Firefox from supporting H.264.
They're absolutely not supporting choice. They're trying to make it so if you're a Linux user, the Internet won't work. Just more of the same anti-competitive tactics.
Yeah, the story you mention was pointed out above. Link here: Evolutionary Computing Via FPGAs.
Your argument is wrong because an egg will break if you drop it.