pulseaudio causing crashing of applications

[Laurent Rineau]

On Thursday 31 January 2008 14:23:28 Rex Dieter wrote:
> Laurent Rineau wrote:
> > On Thursday 31 January 2008 13:34:30 Rex Dieter wrote:
> >> Chris Snook wrote:
> >> > Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled that the Gnome developers are pushing
> >> > ahead with all this neat stuff, but I wish they'd just let KDE be KDE
> >> > if they're not even going to bother testing it.
> >>
> >> "They" != Gnome developers.  They = KDE SIG.  If you want someone to
> >> criticize and blame, blame the right people. :)
> >>
> >> That said, disabling pa support in kde is relatively simple (we left it
> >> optional on purpose):
> >> rpm -e kde-settings-pulseaudio alsa-plugins-pulseaudio
> >> (and restart your kde session).
> >
> > How difficult would it be to make that setting a per-user choice?
>
> Not implemented, patches welcome.
>
> For lauching the pulseaudio daemon, that's easy, see
> /etc/kde/env/pulseaudio.sh
> add ability to read user-conf to optionally disable.

/etc/kde/env/pulseaudio.sh could use a trick like that:

#!/bin/sh
if [ -x /usr/bin/pulseaudio -a ! -e $HOME/.pulse/do-not-launch-in-kde]; then
  /usr/bin/pulseaudio -D
fi

That would allow users to block pulseaudio by creating a dummy file 
$HOME/.pulse/do-not-launch-in-kde. That is not a pretty solution however.

> To add a per-user ability to override the default alsa device/plugin (ala
> alsa-plugins-pulseaudio), that looks a bit harder.

Actually that is the easiest: the user can put the following in 
$HOME/.asoundrc

   pcm.!default {
   type hw
   card 0
   }

   ctl.!default {
   type hw           
    card 0
   }

-- 
Laurent Rineau
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LaurentRineau