> Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2015 14:21:07 +0200
> From: ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net
> To: linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
> Subject: Re: [LAU] Diagnosing JACK
>
> On Fri, 9 Oct 2015 10:47:15 +0000, Kaza Kore wrote:
> >Generally PEOPLE don't install PulseAudio, rather it is installed by
> >default as an integral part to most Linux distributions these days and
> >there is no option not to have it installed and you can not even
> >remove it! So why have a bitch about something which isn't a user
> >choice and I know full well you are aware of that fact!
>
> That's at best a half-truth. Bloated software for no reasons makes
> pulseaudio a hard dependency, that easily could be resolved by an empty
> dummy package.
>
> Pulseaudio is useful for some people, but it often is the source of
> trouble for users who want to make audio productions.
>
> However, even if you install Ubuntu without bloated software you
> neither need pulseaudio, nor a dummy package that fakes to provide
> pulseaudio.
>
> Just in case I installed a dummy package, but for demonstration I'll
> remove it and you'll see that even Ubuntu doesn't need pusleaudio, let
> alone Arch Linux:
>
> [root@archlinux rocketmouse]# systemd-nspawn -qD /mnt/moonstudio
> [root@moonstudio ~]# cat /etc/issue
> Ubuntu Wily Werewolf (development branch) \n \l
>
> [root@moonstudio ~]# dpkg -l pulseaudio
> ii pulseaudio 2015:09-06-moons all Dummypackage
>
> [root@moonstudio ~]# apt-get remove pulseaudio Reading package
> lists... Done Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> The following packages will be REMOVED:
> pulseaudio
> 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
> After this operation, 9216 B disk space will be freed.
> Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
> (Reading database ... 227898 files and directories currently
> installed.) Removing pulseaudio (2015:09-06-moonstudio) ...
>
> Absolutely nothing requires pulseaudio. This Ubuntu install does miss
> nothing, it has got openbox and jwm installed, qupzilla and icecat,
> roxterm, spacefm and rodent, claws mail, qjackctl and jack2, gimp,
> pluma, engrampa etc.. IOW all that GUI stuff users usually want, if they
> prefer GUI over command line. I don't feel the need to install the
> pulseaudio dummy package, because I even can't imagine that some
> software I will install will have got a hard dependency to pulseaudio.
> Without a dummy package I perhaps need to read what will get
> installed, if I don't make usage of the "--no-install-recommends"
> option. For a few packages pulseaudio perhaps is an optional
> dependency, that by some Debian/Ubuntu packages might be a recommended
> dependency.
>
> What requires pulseaudio on your Linux installs? What distros are you
> using? Ubuntu and Arch don't require it!
>
> Regards,
> Ralf

Last time I looked into removing PulseAudio from a Ubuntu Studio was a 12.04 installation (and I'm not currently running 14.04 but highly doubt that much has changed) it wanted to remove the entire DE and about 20 other bits of software on apt-get uninstall! I have never seen Ubuntu just say it will remove PA and nothing else from that command in my personal experience. Hence why I went the route of removing the executable flag from the file it opens instead, when I wanted to have it not used in my system. Removing it would break too many other things! (Trust me I tried!) Plus a lot of desktop applications in Ubuntu are only compiled to work with PA so you will find you can't get sound out of some software, which may be fine if only using for studio use but if using for desktop use as well is not! If this wasn't the case why does a quick google search bring up dozens and dozens and dozens of results of people having issues after removing PA from Ubuntu and pages offering suggestions of how to do it in a tidy manner which doesn't cause issues? You know you are skirting the truth of the matter at best! Yes there are ways around it, but just blindly removing it will likely cause you a lot more problems that it will solve with the majority of distributions out there (everything Debian based, down through Ubuntu and Mint (which covers the largest number of users in the Ubuntu world) plus the likes of Fedora as well and likely others too.)

And that doesn't change the fact that it is not the user who installs it but the OS by default as the default driver to use and often the only driver subsequent programs are packaged for unless you build them yourself, so it doesn't change the fact you are throwing offensive accusations at people yet again for no reason at all which I am positive you know aren't true!

Regards, Dale.