(2014-05-06, 19:20)fritsch Wrote: Sadly, you did not understand a single thing.
That's entirely possible, and if so, I apologize. When it comes to Linux, I find that happens more often than I would like.
(2014-05-06, 19:20)fritsch Wrote: Quote:Please understand that there are a lot of Linux users nowadays that are just users. We don't tinker around in Linux any more than we absolutely have to, and we use whatever sound system Ubuntu provides by default, and probably half of us have no idea what that even is.
Exactly that's the point here. xbmc users the audio system ubuntu installs by default and this _is_ pulseaudio. We start xbmc, ask "pulseaudio are you here?" - If it answers: "Yes, I am". We ask: "Do you make the audio on that computer?" If it tells yes, we use it.
Frodo had big problems when PA was running, cause the ALSA device would be blocked by pulseaudio - the _default_ audio server on Ubuntu. When the blocking happens while starting or during playback. Frodo would just segfault.
So now users complain about an audio system they have installed, up _and_ running and we therefore make use of it :-(
I'm not complaining about that, exactly. But as a programmer and probably somewhat of a Linux expert, you probably don't really appreciate how nerve-wracking it is when you upgrade a piece of software and suddenly something like the sound isn't working the way it should be. And maybe it only takes someone that knows what they are doing about 15 seconds to find the setting that needs to be changed and fix it, but if you are just an average user and have no idea what that setting is, it could take hours or days to figure it out. The only reason I'm at all nervous about doing the upgrade is because I remember how much trouble I had getting the sound to work under Eden, and I never did get surround to work. And in Ubuntu, once you have upgraded, there is no easy way to roll back a version (unlike, say, OS X where you can simply restore your previous version and its data files from a Time Machine backup). So, just the fact that Linux users are posting that they are having sound issues is making me really nervous. Especially after you said, "we are directly planning 13.1 (as we f**cked it up one day before release) ... so not only you are frustrated :-)" to another person in this thread.
I will note that under Frodo, the startup sound has never played for me, and sometimes it takes two or three seconds before I hear menu sounds. So maybe I am experiencing a small bit of the problems you mentioned. But those aren't that important compared to getting true surround sound during video playback.
(2014-05-06, 19:20)fritsch Wrote: Edit2: And if you now complain about the "passthrough" option being hidden in the advanced setting. We did that, cause normal joe has no clue what passthrough is. We exactly made it that way - so that "normal" audio just works without doing anything ...
Well, I'm not now because now I know where it is. But I'll bet there were people who got the update that didn't. And if you are sitting down to watch a recorded TV show or other video with your family, and suddenly it's not working right, sometimes you tend to go into panic mode.
Maybe major version upgrades shouldn't be pushed through the normal repositories unless specifically requested by the user in some way, I don't know. That's one blessing/curse of Ubuntu as opposed to OS X. On a Mac you specifically need to go out and get the upgraded version, which can be a pain compared to Ubuntu's automatic updates (or one-click depending on how you have it configured). But on Ubuntu, if you get an update you weren't expecting that requires configuration changes to work properly, that can cause a bit of panic if you were depending on the software to work. Anyway, it just seems like some Linux users had a bit of trouble with this upgrade. And personally, that's the sort of thing I'm more than happy to try to deal with on a weekend when I have all the time in the world to mess with it, but not on a weekday evening when I just want to watch TV.
I understand that you are actually trying to make things better and in that regard I appreciate your efforts. Ultimately I have no doubt this will be an improvement. It's just the surprise factor, coupled with the lack of knowledge on the part of many users to know how to fix any issues they may encounter, that I sort of wish could have been avoided. But partly the problem is the way Ubuntu updates software - even if you don't let Ununtu do completely automatic updates, it still just shows a big list of updates (which aren't always read because you often have to scroll to see more than the first few) and there is no mechanism to display a warning saying, "If you install this, you will need to reconfigure that" or even to pop up a web page showing what to do after the update. So I really don't see any way you could have avoided this.
