Sound on Linux Anti-FUD: Calm, Certainty and Confidence

“Modern Multi-user Desktop

“So, these days a modern, multi-user desktop is quite a
different beast to what it once was. Components such as Console Kit
track which users are currently active (e.g. when more than one
user is logged in simultaneously) and tells udev to write
appropriate ACLs to enforce this policy. Users also want to use
network attached sound systems, such as Apple Airtunes (RAOP)
devices and UPnP media renderers etc. not to mention Bluetooth
devices. All of this is much further up the sound stack than the
low level driver level and has to deal with various permission and
authentication schemes. This obviously needs a userspace component
to govern this interaction. Something has to be responsible for
this and a “sound server” of some sort obviously fits the bill
perfectly.

“PulseAudio

“So enter PulseAudio. It’s had it’s fair share of bad publicity,
but ultimately this important part of the Linux sound stack is
taking on several roles that are important in a modern desktop.
It’s dealing with several different things:”

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