Proper PulseAudio installation for KUbuntu 10.4

[Ric Moore]

On Fri, 2010-06-25 at 05:39 +0200, Reinhold Rumberger wrote:
> On Friday 25 June 2010, Ric Moore wrote:
> > On Thu, 2010-06-24 at 22:18 +0200, Reinhold Rumberger wrote:
> > > On Thursday 24 June 2010, Ric Moore wrote:
> > > > On Thu, 2010-06-24 at 20:45 +0100, Mark Greenwood wrote:
> > > > > You'll find it mostly works, but KDE apps will all use ALSA
> > > > > routing to talk to pulseaudio, or will not produce any audio
> > > > > at all. This problem is fixed in Maverick, but is unlikely
> > > > > to be fixed in Lucid.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Basically, pulseaudio under Kubuntu 10.04 is not supported,
> > > > > and does not work properly.
> > > > 
> > > > I thought Lucid was LTS?? Why wouldn't it be "fixed"?
> > > > <sighs> Ric
> > > 
> > > Why would they fix something they don't support?
> > 
> > Forgive me for being dense, but the comment made which I was
> > replying to was that it would "be fixed in Maverick", which I
> > assume is the next release?? Ergo, would it not be fixed for the
> > LTS release which is Lucid?
> 
> It's not supported in Lucid, so it's unlikely to be fixed there, 
> especially since it is an LTS release. Attempting to fix it would 
> introduce more instability.
> It is, apparently, supported in Maverick, so I'd expect it to be 
> fixed there.
> 
> > One thing is for sure, you cannot remove all of the pulseaudio
> > packages without major breakage to the system, so that leads me
> > to believe that there is a measure of support for pulse within
> > the Kubuntu scheme of things, especially if you cannot remove it.
> 
> I can remove everything but two libraries that kmix depends on, and 
> they don't seem to interfere with anything...
> 
> > It would suit me just fine to remove it completely and rely on
> > alsa totally. But, as I just mentioned, that apparently is not
> > the case. Anyone else want some of this? I suggest it be totally
> > fixed or totally removed. Let's hear it from the choir. :) Ric
> 
> There shouldn't be a problem with removing the sound daemon, and 
> that's the active part. Remove that, and your applications will be 
> forced to use alsa or whatever. If you can't remove it, I'd like to 
> know the package that depends on PA in such a way that it can't be 
> removed...

Removing libpulse0 would also remove a pile of KDE packages. Why would
akonadi-kde-resource-googledata depend on libpulse0? Or Kaddressbook? I
really want to know. I've been using Linux since the days of the 11
floppy install. When I see such humongous depends, I have to believe
that someone, who knows better than me, has ordained that the package
remain for some reason. Then the package causes breakages and simple
minded folks like me go nutz. 

Ok, so a lot of us still have to select audio sources from time to time.
asoundconf.gtk used to do that perfectly, until a function was removed
from the alsa utils package during the karmic beta period. God help me,
I'm 60 and forget what was removed, but it being removed crippled that
perfect little app and I groused about it here, then. 

To me and what a quick google search told me, LTS means support for 3
years. What I'm reading here is that within less than 6 months pulse
issues with KDE will be remedied, but to get those remedies one would
have to abandon LTS security and upgrade to a version supported far
less? It boggles my mind that it would be expected for users to accept
that. Maybe I should just STFU, but I really want STABLE for development
work and not live the life of the perpetual beta tester, like the Fedora
Users are. Ric