pulseaudio deeply unreliable (Fedora 10)

[Kevin Kofler]

Nigel Henry wrote:
> If the user now has his/her sounds working, that is all that I'm trying to
> help with. Personally I have no interest in pulseaudio, as on all my 3
> machines the sound works without pulseaudio entering the equation.

Try playing sound from 2 or more apps at once on hardware with no hardware
mixing (or with hardware mixing not supported by the ALSA driver), it just
won't work without PulseAudio (or dmix, which has its own share of
compatibility problems).
 
> I will continue to try and help folks with sound related problems. I do
> not believe that pulseaudio is necessary for sounds to work, and sounds
> worked with Alsa long before pulseaudio existed (FC1).

See above. Back in FC1 when we didn't even have dmix by default, it just
didn't work. Play sound in one app and all others will error saying they
can't access the sound device.

> No doubt this will start some flame or other, but is the way I answer
> sound related problems, whether on Fedora, Debian, or Kubuntu/Ubuntu
> lists. So so be it.

Sorry, but Fedora uses PulseAudio by default, and it does so for a reason.
You're giving out bad advice and telling people to use an unsupported
configuration. (In fact when they ask me to help with their sound problems
the first thing I'll tell them is to make sure PulseAudio is installed.)

        Kevin Kofler