Firefox 53 (in Sid) requires Pulse Audio for sound

[sjukfan]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1247056
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments ... x_nightly/

Haven't seen this around. In short, the Firefox dev team have problems with ALSA so the plan is to ditch the ALSA support and make Firefox require Pulse Audio in the future. They will leave the ALSA code in there but it will be unsupported and to use it you'll have to compile it yourself.

My track record with Pulse Audio hasn't been very good so I'd prefer to leave it out. Anyone know what the build time might be on a core 2 quad with 8GB ram? Or if Pale Moon or similar browser are planning to keep the ALSA support?


For those who can't/want to compile the source themselves you can use apule to emulate pulseaudio under alsa. It's in active development again.

Edit: Changed subject and added link to apulse.

[stevepusser]

I don't think that Pale Moon has any plans for that. Debian builds from source also might stick to ALSA; for example, Debian's version 49 uses gtk 2 instead of gtk 3 like Mozilla's.

8 GB of ram should be plenty- The last time I built Firefox from source was years ago on an older i5 processor, and the compile itself took a couple hours using two real cores plus two hyperthreaded ones. However, the lengthy built-in self-testing of the finished binaries took much longer then the compiling and used only one thread, but the self test could probably be disabled.

The Debian sources include maybe a hundred separate source packages, mostly for the language packs, so that makes the source somewhat tedious to get unless you use something like "apt-get source" for that particular release.

[bw123]

I have never used firefox for audio, had no idea...sort of interesting topic. Does this have something to do with flash?

[stevepusser]

Not really, more like what output it would use to play audio from any source in the browser, be it from Flash, HTML5, RTC, or something else.

[bw123]

Maybe i'm just a bad brain, but sounds kinda nutty to require sound support to install a browser?

[sjukfan]

Maybe i'm just a bad brain, but sounds kinda nutty to require sound support to install a browser?

Yeah. I have this aversion against requirements. Shouldn't take that many if statements to write for both alternatives that there's sound and there's not.

[debiman]

I don't think that Pale Moon has any plans for that.

for what?
keeping alsa or dropping it?
imho, palemoon is based on an older version of FF and, accordingly, will stick to whatever that older version uses.
but that's really just an opinion.

for compiling on a dual core - on my quad core it (ff 48 with gtk2) took quite a while - not sure exactly, maybe an hour. long enough to go away and do something else for a while, but not so long as to leave it running while off to work.

[timbgo]

Good understanding is necessary! People like me, so users up to somewhat advanced *nix users, after reading:
Require PulseAudio on Linux
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1247056
can only conclude:

Aahhh... I will now have to install Pulseaudio...

Wrong! But it took me several hours scattered over some time I stole from other things I do, to figure it out!
Pulseaudio is not required on at least some of the well known and well used FOSS GNU Linux distros!
( my update on these lists below, and the Mozilla bug, are... pending at the time of posting this )
The reliable information:
Not required on Archlinux
http://www.mail-archive.com/alsa-user@l ... 31929.html
Not required on Gentoo [ freshly confirmed here ]
https://marc.info/?l=gentoo-user&m=147962947600929&w=2

I do not have a Debian installed right now (and I would not want it with systemd anyway), but I thought other readers will want to know this information.

Regards!

[bw123]

it took me several hours scattered over some time I stole from other things I do, to figure it out!

Thanks for the time, but just so I get it, are you saying the dummy pulseaudio.deb is the solution?

I do not have a Debian installed right now (and I would not want it with systemd anyway)

you can still use sysVinit btw, works just fine
https://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser#systemd

[Segfault]

Code: Select all

firefox: Mon Nov 21 23:28:39 2016: 5510 seconds

This is how long it took on an i3, Gentoo. However, this binary was built using shared libraries, already present in the system. BTW, ALSA cannot be tossed, ALSA still has to be there, Pulseaudio is just a parasite layer between ALSA and user applications.

[timbgo]

it took me several hours scattered over some time I stole from other things I do, to figure it out!

Thanks for the time, but just so I get it, are you saying the dummy pulseaudio.deb is the solution?

I wouldn't know. I'm not very advanced...

I do not have a Debian installed right now (and I would not want it with systemd anyway)

you can still use sysVinit btw, works just fine
https://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser#systemd

...Ah, it might work... To be honest, I miss Debian as it used to be. And, the rift could be bridged btwn Debian and Devuan, if the freedom was back, but really. Jaromil, the leader of the Devuan project, a fork of Debian says so in the video:
Devuan GNU+Linux presented at FSCONS 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMvyOGawNwo
somewhere from: 0:36:30 (but adding #t0:36:30 to the url didn't make it for me start at 36min 30sec, and it should, how come?).

It's not just systemd, but also the other (can I call it:) poetterware? dbus, *kits (sure: pulse) and other (what is, in my opinion) non-true unix programs/packages...

Code: Select all

firefox: Mon Nov 21 23:28:39 2016: 5510 seconds

This is how long it took on an i3, Gentoo.[/code]
However, this binary was built using shared libraries, already present in the system.

One hour and a half!? Can't be... It takes around one hour here, and my system is older... IIUC.
(
Intel won't let me view the page:
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ ... essor.html
probably because I have tracking protection... and I'm not disabling it on intel.com... Give me anonymous browsing of your site, you big dirty business!...
)
And my system is olde:

Code: Select all

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor   : 0
vendor_id   : AuthenticAMD
cpu family   : 16
model      : 4
model name   : AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 965 Processor
stepping   : 3
...


( that's a 4-core old phenom...).

BTW, ALSA cannot be tossed, ALSA still has to be there, Pulseaudio is just a parasite layer between ALSA and user applications.

Go and have a look, they even changed the title... Looks like they're promising to require Pulseaudio on everybody.

And here's what I believe is the real issue about Pulse:

In the Sureveillance Age that we live in, in which everybody carries
appliances that state spies, and world spies like Google, can all listen
to
(
at any later date, they just locate where any event that you took part
in, private or public, they don't have any consideration, the most
private events included, any event, as they have all in their databases,
years later if they want to, and apply a search on it just like the
Google users --I keep to duckduckgo.com-- search in their browsers, and
in this case it's searching through sound, and they find whatever they
search for, in their databases of recordings...
),
in this Surveillance Age we live in, you now tell me what Pulseaudio
is for, with all the remote seats --sure they may have renamed those, I
do not follow their development in the least anymore-- of some
policykit's and stuff? You tell me!

Yeah, they've even changed the title:
Require PulseAudio to play sound on Linux
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1247056
while the old title was just "Require PulseAudio on Linux". Feel like a promise... No.. Mozilla has also good developers, just like Debian still has... But if I were one, I couldn't bare the overwhelming overbearance of the poetterware...

Regards!

[Segfault]

One hour and a half!? Can't be... It takes around one hour here, and my system is older... IIUC.

I use PGO, it doubles the build time. Anyhow, version 50 still builds without pulse, remains to be seen. Oh, and I build with -j2 so building won't slow down my box.

[timbgo]

One hour and a half!? Can't be... It takes around one hour here, and my system is older... IIUC.

I use PGO, it doubles the build time.
...
Oh, and I build with -j2 so building won't slow down my box.

Yeah, that the reason! Now I understand the (very relative) slowliness.

Anyhow, version 50 still builds without pulse, remains to be seen.

Not necessarily on Debian. It depends on your developers, whether they decide to, in Debian's case, follow the Archlinux attitude (Arch is also very predominantly, and officially only- systemd-based), where pure ALSA is available, and Firefox works, like I posted about...
It depends on your developers, but I can't go any deeper into this.

Regards to everybody!

[stevepusser]

Hah, trying rebuilding the Debian Firefox--the last time I did that, the self testing procedure after the build took several times as long as the actual compilation, though I don't know if that is still part of the build. It can also be disabled in the mozconfig.in files. I wonder if the current Firefox will build on the openSUSE build service, or if the machines will run out of RAM during the linking. I provide the Pale Moon repository on the OBS, and so far no RAM issues with those builds.

[MoaTib]

I do not have a Debian installed right now (and I would not want it with systemd anyway)

you can still use sysVinit btw, works just fine
https://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser#systemd

But the systemd-shim package is orphaned since at least five months. Someone was interested and asked for a mentor to sponsor him, but a Debian developer welcomed him (a month later...) rather negatively telling him that they will not "blindly sponsor stuff just because of somebody is interested" and that "an unmaintained Package is better than a badly maintained package ". The guy asking for sponsorship left and never came back.

So now, systemd-shim is officially orphaned and unmaintained and no longer compatible with systemd.