(Linux) Is it just me or does PulseAudio suck?

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I mean ALSA seemed much better, I don't understand what PulseAudio added that ALSA doesn't have. I have problems running older native Linux games with PulseAudio which seems to be an SDL issues. I have problems running the Linux version of steam with PulseAudio. My virtual operating systems inside Qemu sound horrible with PulseAudio. Seriously who uses this crap? I can't believe the Linux version of Skype requires PulseAudio now. Can someone please elaborate on what PulseAudio is actually suppose do better than ALSA?

Is it higher quality sound? Cause I'll take an older lower quality audio driver that works over PulseAudio which clearly doesn't. I hate PulseAudio more than I hate Windows 8 and Gnome 3 and I hate Windows 8 and Gnome 3.

It maybe be the single most annoying thing to me in computers.

PulseAudio sucks for gaming purposes (just like the Linux kernel itself does), but it gets the job done for movies or music.

And along came steam os. Still not wonderful give it a few years maybe.

Well I don't see how the Linux Kernel sucks for gaming in and of itself, just because games aren't native don't mean the kernel sucks. Games that run native on Linux seem to run faster than their Windows counter part in my opinion. Linux just needs more native games, its there as an operating system. Bioshock Infinite runs great on Arch Linux and it worked out of box just like it would on Windows.



I doubt it'll really increase Linux's popularity, other big companies like Google have made a Linux distro too and nothing happened. Also while I wanted this to be a general Linux discussion, to go back to PulseAudio, Steam on Linux doesn't even use it. Steam has its own ALSA library files in its folder that it loads.

There are three things that are wrong with SteamOS:

- The Linux kernel itself has a latency that's too high for fast paced games
- It's poorly optimized
- It's based on Debian

I've played games on Arch Linux myself. Everything works on the same graphical settings as in Windows (at least if it's on DirectX9c equivalent settings), but the frame rate is inferior, and the latency poses a significant issue. Don't get me wrong, Arch Linux is excellent for low-level programming, analyzing datasets and so on (moreso than any other OS), but not gaming. Typically, games for Linux will actually run better in FreeBSD.



Linus Torvalds could have capitalized on both Windows ME and Vista, and Mac OS Classic.

Are you refering to latency in the controls? I haven't noticed but I normally game with a controller, would that fix this problem? As for the frame rate it rarely loses more than 10 frames per second and I don't trust this video, Ubuntu sucks. My guess is that with a lighter install frrom Arch, the frame rate would be even closer to that of Windows.



Ubuntu is an adware filled nightmare with fifty million background tasks running, Ubuntu is to Linux what Vista is to Windows.

The frame-rate issue is not that big of a deal if you have a powerful computer. I've noticed the latency issue in fast-paced games (and some slow-paced ones, like Banished), but in adventure games from GOG, DosBox and the realtime applications I've used in Arch Linux, it's not that big of a deal.



Very good analogy!

I don't doubt you but I really want to recreate this latency problem on my Arch Linux system, Banished seems to be a Windows only game. Are you running it through wine? If so that doesn't seem like a good test as wine could be a factor. I have tons of games on steam and can even purchase one to test if you can name a few games that has this latency issue on Linux.

Are you sure this a kernel problem? Are the actual software ports or hardware support to blame, maybe Linux doesn't like your keyboard. Again I don't doubt you but I am setting up both my gaming rigs as Linux and I might rethink that if some games are messed up, I just ran RBDoom3BFG (Doom 3) on my phenom with a USB keyboard and it seemed ok.

Radeon drivers need to catch up as well :p

I run it through Wine. It's coded to run seamlessly in Wine, though. On the other hand, Wine is very light on system resources, and it's not an emulator in the same sense as VirtualBox or DosBox. It doesn't lag or anything, but it takes slightly (but noticably) longer time to react than when run on Windows.

If I may, Ubuntu is to Linux as Vista is to Windows *Server* (ie, any non-basic services default to disabled).



Yeah,that Linux based Android OS Google made...I doubt it will ever catch on. (friendly sarcasm!)
There are popular LInux distos, it's just that they aren't presented as such, or even as OS's at all. A fair percent of routers and other network appliance - including home/consumer models - run a minimal distro, as do some java based electronics like DVD/BR players, etc. Considering the truly dismal performance, I hesitate to even throw the Steam console into that group, though...

To bring the topic back around, sound has been consistently, exceedingly problematic on PC's ever since it had to go through a HAL. Even before that, it had to be granted priority hardware interrupts & DMA to not stutter. From a sensory POV, sound is effectively realtime; modern PC OS's are not.