I'd like to get rid of pulseaudio but ...

[Kevin Kofler]

Steve Underwood wrote:
> I thought most people wanted to get rid of pulseaudio.

Only because people like you perpetuate some stupid myth that PulseAudio is
evil.

> Its a very troublesome program with poor documentation, and little output
> to help you resolve problems. If you get it working it seems to offer you
> nothing you didn't have before you had pulseaudio.

It makes sound just work, without apps fighting for the sound device (or
multiple incompatible sound servers all trying to "fix" this fighting for
the sound device). No more annoyances like games failing to play sound
because some GUI event sound was still being played when they tried opening
the sound device. (I've seen, or rather heard, that happen way too often in
pre-PulseAudio times.)

Most sound cards don't do mixing in hardware. A few do support it, but the
ALSA driver doesn't. Only few sound cards can do it and have ALSA support
for it. So PulseAudio is a mixing solution which works for everyone.

        Kevin Kofler