Pulseaudio : lots of issues, how can I help?

[Jerry James]

On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 1:46 PM, Colin Walters <walters at verbum.org> wrote:
> If you want to run terminal applications, can't you just log in to a
> full screen gnome-terminal?

I got the impression that Janina was talking about those who need
audio to be able to login in the first place.

> We're going to be removing the legacy non-X system consoles by default
> in the long run.

Those have been useful to me in a lot of circumstances that I don't
see going away anytime soon.  Here are a few just off the top of my
head.

1. It's late.  I'm tired.  I log out, then remember some small system
administration task I meant to do.  Rather than wait for all the GUI
stuff to reload as I log back in, it is much faster to switch to a
text console, login there, do my task, then log back out.

2. I'm playing some game that runs at a low resolution and it crashes.
 I don't know why, but my mouse is almost always nonfunctional
afterwards.  When my desktop is at 320x200 and I can't use the mouse,
regaining control is difficult.  I often switch to a text console so I
can clean up some running programs in a nice way before I
Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to get my X back.  (I have this happen quite often
with one particular game that my 9 year old likes.  I'd run it in GDB
so I can get a backtrace and file a proper bug report, except when it
crashes I can't SEE the backtrace because my screen is at 320x200 and
my mouse is dead.  Argh!)

3. I launch some X program that consumes 100% CPU and is clearly out
of control.  In those cases, the mouse becomes sluggish.  It can take
a very long time to either launch a gnome-terminal or get the mouse
over a gnome-terminal so I can click on it, have the click actually
move the focus to that window, type the command to kill the process,
have the typed text actually show up on the gnome-terminal, press the
Enter key, then wait the shell to process the command.  It is MUCH
faster to switch to a text console, login, kill the process, logout,
and switch back to X.

Once you can guarantee that X programs won't consume 100% CPU or crash
while in a different screen resolution from my desktop, and can
guarantee that logging into an X session is below the human time
perception threshold, then I'll be ready to give up text consoles.
Until then, I want them.
-- 
Jerry James
http://loganjerry.googlepages.com/