On Tue, 18 Aug 2015 08:57:43 -0400 Edward Lukacs <lukac...@verizon.net> wrote:
> robust software. Linux has been amazingly good for most of its life but > over the last few years it has begun to show serious signs of bloating. > I mean the sort of thing that Detroit did when they put tail-fins on > cars and the sort of unmentionable obscenities that came out of > Microsoft whenever they needed to generate more revenue, i.e., install a > bunch of new options and features in a software package that few people > needed, but which required changes which were incompatible with the last > version, thus forcing their customers to update to bloatware which > strained their old boxes enough to make them want to buy new ones. Honestly, at the risk of sounding like old man yelling at clouds, but I feel the same. it's due to the ever increasing layers upon layers of abstraction. I find it incredibly difficult to find out how things are glued together. Those layers of abstraction make documentation hard to maintain and write. some things get better, like X always seems to work now (and that's a big deal !). others get worse. pulse audio is a complete mess and trying to figure out how to modify things is just god-awful. it took me several hours to find out how to modify my default.pa file to select the right default audio output. and then what happens - pulse audio will idle your sink , AND THEN NOT REACTIVATE IT when you actually want to use the audio again. freaking idiotic. so back to the default.pa file to disable some wacky module that idles your default audio sink. > > My own opinion, for what it's worth, is to keep your system simple, > stupid, as the saying goes. truly. but these days even simple doesn't work. i just removed pulseaudio and .... audacious works fine (because i can select the audio device), but iceweasel won't play any audio (and i'm NOT using flash). won't generate errors, EVEN STRACE SHOWS NOTHING. just won't work. amazing... what's even more amazing is that i see problem reports going back 5 years precisely about iceweasel not playing audio. i know what audio device i should be selecting, i have it set to default in the ~/.asoundrc file and icweweasel just doesn't do anything. oh well. audacious works- i got tunes :-) Brian
