how is pulseaudio supposed to work?

[Richi Plana]

On Mon, 2007-12-17 at 10:24 -0500, Colin Walters wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-12-17 at 10:17 -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 17, 2007 at 09:44:48AM -0500, Colin Walters wrote:
> > > > - user logging in on vty. 
> > > > - user logging in on vty and running startx/xinit
> > > These will be going away - just run X with a fullscreen shell.
> > 
> > Wait, what???
> 
> The virtual consoles will still be around, but really should only be an
> emergency fallback.  The right way to do this is to log in via gdm, and
> select a session that gives you a fullscreen shell (with tabs, windows,
> virtual desktops) etc.

I think someone is assuming the wrong thing about why people use
virtual, text-based consoles. I don't know about others, but the only
reason I use VCs these days is when X won't work or something is hogging
the system resources and I have to use a minimalistic shell to fix it.

I don't think supporting sound via PulseAudio is a big issue for
occasional VC users. But again, if PulseAudio starts itself
automatically either via its library or some other trigger (such as a
socket open request), it wouldn't even be an issue.

> This gives us one supported login path for local machines, and avoids
> all the brokenness that occurs with multiple concurrent logins to a
> shared home directory.

As much as I laud the attempt to incorporate smooth usage of shared home
directories, I wouldn't do it at the expense of other "features" that
other uses might want such as a VC or a different login manager.
<emphasis>Not that I'm asking everything to be supported.</emphasis> I'm
just hoping no one starts lopping off other features for causing
"breakage".
--

Richi Plana