[Bug 11075] New: esd conflicts with alsa -- confusion for audio apps

[bugzilla-daemon at bugzilla.ubuntu.com]

Please do not reply to this email.  You can add comments at
http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=11075
Ubuntu | esound

           Summary: esd conflicts with alsa -- confusion for audio apps
           Product: Ubuntu
           Version: unspecified
          Platform: i386
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: esound
        AssignedTo: debzilla at ubuntu.com
        ReportedBy: radarsat1 at gmail.com
         QAContact: desktop-bugs at lists.ubuntu.com


I recently went to try out some audio apps (including my own project) and found
that none of the ALSA- or OSS-based apps would produce sound.  I spent some time
trying to figure out how to configure ALSA correctly, but eventually noticed
that the esound daemon was running.  I killed it using killall and suddenly all
my audio apps worked correctly.
I have no problem with esd being used for the desktop, but if it causes
conflicts with ALSA- and OSS-based apps, this is a big problem.  I tried
installing libesd-alsa0 to see if that would correct the problem but it seemed
to make no difference.
This affects all applications using ALSA, OSS (due to the OSS-emulation layer in
ALSA), and by extension all PortAudio-based applications, which is essentially
all useful audio applications that don't fit under the "media player" category.
 (By the way, I also noticed that PortAudio doesn't seem to be in the
repositories??  This is strange, as it is in Debian.)
For Ubuntu to remain user-friendly towards audio users, this situation must be
corrected, since you cannot expect musicians to open a terminal and type
"killall esd" to get their applications working.
However, I am surprised that this conflict exists in the first place, as I
thought esd could co-exist with ALSA just fine.  But I suppose it is because esd
claims all alsa output channels for itself.

-- 
Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are the QA contact for the bug, or are watching the QA contact.