Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

kuleszdl · 2018-12-30 17:07:21

I found this discussion from which it seems that pulseaudio is a hard dependency for firefox:

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/03/fir … alsa-linux

I don't consider chromium a viable alternative, so I am worried about this development. But as far as I understand, you confirm that Firefox works well with the apulse wrapper? And how about KDE? Can it be run with apulse instead of pulseaudio?

golinux · 2018-12-30 18:19:00

My understanding is that it just fools FF into thinking pulseaudio is there. It has been discussed off and on for the last several years on the DNG mail list and this very forum so a little search fu might give you some ideas. I'm still on jessie so no need to go there yet. Good luck and let us know how it works for you.

cynwulf · 2018-12-31 00:52:39

As far as I know there is no dependency on pulseaudio with quantum. I am running it on OpenBSD and I have no pulseaudio installed - and no alsa in fact.

golinux · 2018-12-31 01:23:25

cynwulf wrote:

As far as I know there is no dependency on pulseaudio with quantum. I am running it on OpenBSD and I have no pulseaudio installed - and no alsa in fact.

It looks like it might only be on Linux systems

steve_v · 2018-12-31 09:59:30

golinux wrote:

It looks like it might only be on Linux systems

For the record, I'm running firefox 64.0 without pulseaudio here in Gentoo paradise. The sound is excellent.

On the OP, I'd probably be around here more often if it wasn't for the disturbing level of tinfoil hat insanity that goes on. Some people really need to get a grip.

Last edited by steve_v (2018-12-31 10:12:45)

cynwulf · 2018-12-31 13:51:09

From everything I've read thus far, it would seem that building with alsa support enabled and pulseaudio support disabled is still supported, for now.

http://linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/s … refox.html

golinux · 2018-12-31 17:21:05

Perhaps someone will step up to do that.

golinux · 2018-12-31 18:34:08

steve_v wrote:

On the OP, I'd probably be around here more often if it wasn't for the disturbing level of tinfoil hat insanity that goes on. Some people really need to get a grip.

Huh? There is much less tinfoil fantasy here than on most other forums. It is mostly high level technical discussions and problem solving. Maybe if you were around more often you'd know that.

kuleszdl · 2019-01-03 17:04:54

As far as I understand, Devuan ships unmodified firefox-esr from Debian (Security). However, this one does not seem to depend on pulseaudio:

https://pkginfo.devuan.org/stage/ascii/ … eb9u1.html

@golinux: I am not sure how the rdepends from your posting relates to that. Maybe this changed from Jessie?

Ron · 2019-01-03 17:56:41

While I'm not the OP, I avoid PulseAudio because I don't like the philosophy of its author; that has nothing to do with tinfoil hats.

Last edited by Ron (2019-01-03 18:03:39)

golinux · 2019-01-03 18:47:08

kuleszdl wrote:

@golinux: I am not sure how the rdepends from your posting relates to that. Maybe this changed from Jessie?

There was a question about how pusleaudio rdepends on beowulf compared to earlier releases.

thecolorjay · 2019-02-07 03:18:36

spartrekus wrote:

Hello,
I think that that Devuan tries to be a *free* distribution, without ads, malwares, spying, NSA, and many beautiful modern Snowden technologies. But, Devuan and Linux kernel running increasingly more and more full of those things.
One of them is Pulseaudio, which makes Devuan not like it is described:
https://devuan.org/os/free-software
Chromium has no place here in the distribution. Why Wayland? This is not congruent with the *free* software.
Why Pulseaudio is still present?
Devuan is definitely not a Free Operating System, because it contains many Snowden components.
Devuan is actually not a free operating system, especially because it contains specific softwares.
How can Devuan become closer to a free operating system, like Unix (e.g. OpenBSD), and without malwares, ads,... ?
With best regards,
Sp.

I think your objections should be considered but I don't agree that OpenBSD is completely free of these things either. It's quite easy to install most of what you mentioned in OpenBSD as well. I do agree that Chromium is awful, I don't use it either. I don't like Firefox much either, I'm going to work on repackaging iceweasel-hardened and icedove-hardened for Devuan from Parabola since they are lightweight and hardened which is rather nice, I am a huge fan of Parabola and they offer a OpenRC edition of the OS. Just keep in mind, this is not a wholly free GNU/Linux distribution, neither has it been endorsed by the Freedom Software Foundation. I don't think that's the objective, the objective is to be without systemd. If your objective is wholly free software, you should use Parabola.

golinux · 2019-02-07 03:28:12

thecolorjay wrote:

I'm going to work on repackaging iceweasel-hardened and icedove-hardened for Devuan from Parabola since they are lightweight and hardened which is rather nice

Good that you are taking on that task. Thanks.

I am a huge fan of Parabola and they offer a OpenRC edition of the OS.

OpenRC is also available on Devuan with an expert install.

I don't think that's the objective, the objective is to be without systemd. If your objective is wholly free software, you should use Parabola.

Devuan derivatives heads and gnuinos are "libre".

cynwulf · 2019-02-07 12:40:43

thecolorjay wrote:

I think your objections should be considered but I don't agree that OpenBSD is completely free of these things either. It's quite easy to install most of what you mentioned in OpenBSD as well.

The main difference is that they are in ports. So they are not actually part of OpenBSD's base system and not developed by the project. People can choose whether to use them or not.

In essence the ports system of any *BSD is what amounts to "almost all the crap you get with a typical Linux distribution".

It's probably important to note that:

1) Many OpenBSD developers/users don't install any of it, or just very little (same applies to any 'BSD).
2) Many OpenBSD developers/users don't run X or care about audio, etc.
3) Many OpenBSD developers/users use a different OS altogether as a desktop, as they don't subscribe to the "GNU ideology" / Linux fanclub, whatever you want to call it.

thecolorjay wrote:

I do agree that Chromium is awful, I don't use it either.

I currently use Iridium, have been doing so for well over 12 months, but I will probably switch back to seamonkey or firefox at some point soon.

Iridium has been good, but I have a growing problem with the "chromium base" and it's dominance of the web browser market - a bandwagon which Microsoft have now jumped on as well in rebasing their Edge browser on it.

In terms of the UI/configuration options, firefox seems to be intent on aping the horrible chromium style. That's not a good strategy.

James1138 · 2019-02-07 15:05:31

Apologies if this information is already known. Seamonkey, Pale moon browser nor Iceweasel support DRM at this time - which means watching things like NetFlix or Hulu that people pay good money for will not happen. As for installing PipeLight/Silverlight or MoonLight... does not seem to help with watching DRM content. As for using Chromium or Vivaldi... while based on Google Chrome - requires much tweaking and plugins, it feels not worth the time and effort to enable Chromium to watch DRM content such as NetFlix.

I dislike PulseAudio also and tweaked my system to fall back to using ALSA. But kept the PulseAudio files installed so I can use Firefox ESR to watch stuff like NetFlix. Even then I am sticking with version Firefox 52.9 ESR since Firefox screwed everyone over forcing upgrades that stopped plugins users love from working and even killed themes such as LittleFox and MicroFox - which laptop users like myself enjoy.

Arc · 2019-03-13 23:27:05

golinux wrote:

dxrobertson wrote:
So it seems the libpulse0 is whats really dependent.
That is true even in jessie. It is similar to libsystemd0 that it really doesn't do anything if pulseaudio is not installed but it is a cosmetic/mental annoyance.

Oh oh, okay. The other day I had he sudden realization that I had sound in Firefox even though I was sure I didn't have pulseaudio, but found I had libpulse0. So does that mean that firefox-esr on ascii, a least, is compiled without pulseaudio being required?

golinux · 2019-03-13 23:38:20

I have not yet had to deal with that - still on Jessie. On more recent FF versions where pulseaudio is a hard dependency, libpulse0 won't save you. But do not despair. apulse will get alsa back on FF. There are instructions here and there on how to do this (too lazy to go do the legwork).

darry1966 · 2019-03-14 04:37:01

Quote
"I think your objections should be considered but I don't agree that OpenBSD is completely free of these things either. It's quite easy to install most of what you mentioned in OpenBSD as well. I do agree that Chromium is awful, I don't use it either. I don't like Firefox much either, I'm going to work on repackaging iceweasel-hardened and icedove-hardened for Devuan from Parabola since they are lightweight and hardened which is rather nice,."

That would be awesome I'm using version 45 of GNUIcecat which still uses alsa so an up to date browser like that would be cool.

steelpillow · 2019-11-14 13:48:24

Fascinating thread. My MATE desktop also seems to pull in pulseaudio. Since I do not have audio on my workstations, the way it runs at high priority and restarts if I terminate it is just pants, annoying and occasionally obstructive.
Plenty to do at the moment keeping systemd under control, but I wonder whether in the longer term a project might be kicked off to similarly purge dependency on pulseaudio and promote the choice of alsa+apulse and friends?

golinux · 2019-11-14 16:38:51

With FF now depending on it, that is unlikely.

fsmithred · 2019-11-14 17:38:59

It's not firefox that's pulling it in. Firefox-esr only suggests pulseaudio. It's getting pulled in due to Recommends in xfce. It's probably something similar in mate. Here's the command to check it:

$ aptitude why pulseaudio
i   task-xfce-desktop       Depends    xfce4                  
i A xfce4                   Depends    xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin
i A xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin Recommends pulseaudio

One good way to avoid pulling in packages you don't want is to only install the standard system utilitites and then add what you want after rebooting into the system. It also helps to exclude Recommends.

@steelpillow: you prefer a skirt? (or kilt)

freemedia2018 · 2019-11-15 00:14:58

fsmithred wrote:

It also helps to exclude Recommends.

are recommends still on by default? didnt debian change that after foisting systemd? (around 2014-2015?)

Last edited by freemedia2018 (2019-11-15 00:15:17)

fsmithred · 2019-11-15 14:01:05

freemedia2018 wrote:

fsmithred wrote:
It also helps to exclude Recommends.
are recommends still on by default? didnt debian change that after foisting systemd? (around 2014-2015?)

Yes, you still get Recommends by default.

czeekaj · 2019-11-20 20:01:04

Pulse I noticed has the ability to work with multichannel headphone jacks where ALSA struggles.
Which, I am no ALSA guru and have not been able to pipe the audio to my headphone jack. Might have something to do with realtek, but realtek in itself has proven to have nasty 'bugs' or intended functionality.

Also Pulse has a fair amount of dependencies which is a pain to deal with. Installing pulse on a system without pulse is actually annoying because it seems to require a full restart to get it working or maybe some fooling around with running Daemons.

Last edited by czeekaj (2019-11-20 20:04:57)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2019-12-30 16:39:33

randomer wrote:

Apparently Firefox depends on pulseaudio and i need to have apulse installed to have sound in Firefox? I'm wondering because i don't have it installed and my sound works just fine.

The firefox-esr package in the Devuan repositories does not depend on PulseAudio and is compiled with --enable-alsa so it doesn't need apulse for sound without PA.

Mozilla's FF tarball isn't compiled with that option and so needs apulse for sound if PA is not present.

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#26 2018-12-30 17:07:21

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#27 2018-12-30 18:19:00

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#28 2018-12-31 00:52:39

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#29 2018-12-31 01:23:25

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#30 2018-12-31 09:59:30

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#31 2018-12-31 13:51:09

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#32 2018-12-31 17:21:05

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#33 2018-12-31 18:34:08

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#34 2019-01-03 17:04:54

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#35 2019-01-03 17:56:41

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#36 2019-01-03 18:47:08

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#37 2019-02-07 03:18:36

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#38 2019-02-07 03:28:12

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#39 2019-02-07 12:40:43

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#40 2019-02-07 15:05:31

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#41 2019-03-13 23:27:05

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#42 2019-03-13 23:38:20

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#43 2019-03-14 04:37:01

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#44 2019-11-14 13:48:24

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#45 2019-11-14 16:38:51

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#46 2019-11-14 17:38:59

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#47 2019-11-15 00:14:58

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#48 2019-11-15 14:01:05

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#49 2019-11-20 20:01:04

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

#50 2019-12-30 16:39:33

Re: Why are pulseaudio files present in Devuan?

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