Tried Pulse Audio Again--No Good For A11y

[Les Mikesell]

Lennart Poettering wrote:
>
>>> And it's not just we who fixed
>>> this hole like this. Apple for example does it too. And usually Apple
>>> is the gold standard of user-friendliness, right?
>> No, it sucks just as much when itunes does it.  You expect that kind of 
>> stuff from Apple who only has a short history of multi-user machines and 
>> who would really rather sell you an apple tv or ipod with dock that you can 
>> dedicate to driving your speakers, though. Linux has always been multi-user 
>> and doesn't have any such excuses for arbitrarily disconnecting
>> devices.
> 
> "arbitrarily"?

Arbitrarily, as in guessing who should have exclusive access based on 
nothing that particularly relates to the specific audio device.  It is 
no more right than automatically killing scheduled tape backups would be 
because someone else logged in on a keyboard near the tape device.

> Oh man. Claiming that things are right because Linux always did it
> this way is not very convincing.

Linux what? The kernel doesn't make arbitrary access decisions by 
itself, does it?

> You never noticed that quite a few
> things in Linux haven't been all that shiny right from day 0? Some
> things got fixed by now, and this is just another instance.

Fixed - so the same machine doing audio output can't be used for 
anything else?

>>> Allowing multiple different users audio device access at the same is a
>>> security nightmare. It has been with ALSA dmix. And it is even more so
>>> in PA. 
>> Doesn't the kernel have a mechanism for exclusive locks on devices if 
>> someone wants to have exclusive access?  It's not all that difficult to 
>> eavesdrop on music playing loudly anyway...
> 
> Access to audio devices (both OSS and ALSA) is exclusive by default anyway.

Exclusive access is OK.  Killing that access based on unrelated 
circumstances isn't.

>> What's the right way to set up a media player service that isn't attached 
>> to anyone's session?
> 
> You can bypass PA if you wish. Or run a specific tailored PA
> instance for it. It's up to you.

I meant in Fedora.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com