Tried Pulse Audio Again--No Good For A11y

[Les Mikesell]

Lennart Poettering wrote:
> 
>>> And again, that's the way *I* think it makes the most sense. 
>> If you haven't, give freenx/NX a try, floating your running session among 
>> displays at work, perhaps a wireless laptop, and pick them up from  home 
>> with everything still running.  And try it with several people sharing a 
>> machine.  You might get used to the concept that your devices are really 
>> not that closely coupled. Or perhaps at least that your session isn't tied 
>> to the local console.  X never intended it to be, but before freenx it 
>> wasn't that great remotely.
> 
> If you use a terminal client, then audio should be forwarded to
> it.

That should be an option of course, perhaps the default choice even 
though it won't always work.  If you are on a low bandwidth connection 
which works fine otherwise with NX, audio will be horrible.  And your 
client may not have speakers - you may use many clients and good 
speakers are expensive and not portable.

 > Audio should always be sent to the same machine that shows you the
> video.

No, audio should always be sent to the device you choose.  Guesswork is 
not a good thing.

> Audio is part of the workplace, not the server.

Sometimes you would want an audio 'session' at your local device, 
sometimes you want to control the device on the server.

 > From the
> terminal client to the terminal server we send keyboard, mouse, audio
> recording. From the terminal server to the terminal client we send
> audio playback and screen contents.

I'm usually in the same room with the server, with the server connected 
to speakers intended for the whole room.  But, I want to use the 
keyboard, mouse, and monitor from a nearby desktop box or float the 
display to a laptop - and when I pick up the session from home I don't 
want to attempt audio because of the bandwidth issue.  Windows RDP 
connections attempt that but it's not pretty.  The other point about NX 
as a client is that as far as the local machine is concerned, it is just 
one app running in one window, sort of like Xnest.  You still have full 
access to all the other apps you want to run locally and it usually 
makes much more sense to run  apps that require local audio locally than 
to forward them from some remote session.

Thinking of your computer as a single piece might make sense for someone 
who only has one, but does anyone really run fedora as their one and 
only computer?


-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com