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Firefox 53 (in Sid) requires Pulse Audio for sound

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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#31 Post by Segfault »

Not FUD. It merely means package maintainers managed to build a working copy of FF without PA - this time.

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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#32 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

^ From the Arch bug report:
heftig wrote:The coming sandbox breaks ALSA. I'll build with --enable-alsa until Firefox 54, at which point libpulse will be a hard depend.
I'm using GNOME anyway in my Arch box so... :mrgreen:
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#33 Post by sjukfan »

This annoys me a lot. For a while there I thought they were going to go the right way and let people use it without sound if they wanted but no... <sigh> I guess I'll have to compile it myself then.

For those who CBA to compile themselves this might be an alternative PulseAudio as a minimal unintrusive dumb pipe to ALSA. Hopefully it's not too intrusive and you can run everything but Firefox in ALSA.
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#34 Post by stevepusser »

It turns out the Sid Debian Firefox source files have an internal mechanism to adjust the build-depends and rules file for backports. You just have to get the 94 Sid source files (apt-get source), increment the changelog (dch -i) and make sure the release in the first line of the changelog is "jessie-backports", regenerate new debian.tar.xz and .dsc files (debuild -S -us -uc), delete the existing extracted source folder, and then re-extract the tweaked version with "dpkg-source -x <your-tweaked-version>.dsc". Then build with "debuild -uc -us". I think it has some internal code to automatically use all your CPU cores for the build, but haven't tested that locally.

You can add the alsa support option to debian/mozconfig.in before the source files are regenerated, if you wish.
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#35 Post by stevepusser »

Has anyone tried apulse instead of pulseaudio to see if it fools Firefox 52?

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=187258
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#36 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

stevepusser wrote:Has anyone tried apulse instead of pulseaudio to see if it fools Firefox 52?

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=187258

Code: Select all

Helium: ~/git/apulse/build $ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
..                           
-- Checking for modules 'glib-2.0;alsa'
--   No package 'alsa' found
CMake Error at /usr/share/cmake-3.7/Modules/FindPkgConfig.cmake:415 (message):
  A required package was not found
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  /usr/share/cmake-3.7/Modules/FindPkgConfig.cmake:588 (_pkg_check_modules_internal)
  CMakeLists.txt:8 (pkg_check_modules)


-- Configuring incomplete, errors occurred!
See also "/home/empty/git/apulse/build/CMakeFiles/CMakeOutput.log".
https://gist.github.com/Head-on-a-Stick ... 421e137c7a

:(

I can confirm that firefox-esr version 52 (from experimental) will *not* play audio without PulseAudio.

However, Debian has updated version 45 and it may be that this is chosen for the stable release (I hope).
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#37 Post by stevepusser »

The ALSA dev package is libasound2-dev. There's also a PPA that apulse can be ported from...
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#38 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

stevepusser wrote:The ALSA dev package is libasound2-dev
Thank you very much!

I have now compiled and installed apulse in my Debian stretch system and I can confirm that firefox-esr version 52.0.1 will produce sound without PulseAudio installed.

This installation is booting with runit rather than systemd so I will have to try one of my systemd boxes as well.
There's also a PPA that apulse can be ported from...
Thank you again, I will see if I can package this myself :idea:

EDIT: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=775098 :)
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#39 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
There's also a PPA that apulse can be ported from...
Thank you again, I will see if I can package this myself
The Ubuntu .deb installs and works in my stretch system.

I have rebuilt the .deb in stretch, just in case:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxKgG ... XhIUGRqc28
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#40 Post by stevepusser »

I see the developer for apulse, the same guy who created the freshplayer wrapper for pepperflash, is again actively developing it since Firefox started demanding pulseaudio. I'll try building the latest 1.9 release for my Jessie multimedia OBS repo and for the MX repos--just reusing the debian folder from the PPA's 1.6.
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#41 Post by andoru »

It seems I still have sound in FF (52.0.1, have a mozilla-built package in my ~/bin/ folder) on an ALSA-only Sid install... weird. Not sure how much this is going to last though. I also maintain someone else's PC with a similar installation, and they did have sound problems after updating FF. Fixed it with apulse, thankfully, and I hope we'll be able to circumvent this disastrous decision with it in the future.
After reading the bugzilla thread previously mentioned (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1345661) I find their reason to stick with PulseAudio quite flaky, like they're desperate for PA ****, so much they start worshipping it. Also that Anthony Jones is a downright patronising wanker.
Someone even suggested moving to different frameworks, like SDL2 sound, or OpenAL, but they didn't even bother to consider that.

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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#42 Post by stevepusser »

If any Jessie users want a Debian repo with apulse, I've added to my multimedia+ repository: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 02#p610702
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#43 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

andoru wrote:It seems I still have sound in FF (52.0.1, have a mozilla-built package in my ~/bin/ folder) on an ALSA-only Sid install... weird.
Try firefox-esr from experimental, that is the version I am using in my stretch system (I can't stand old browsers) and that is the version that has no sound without PA (unless apulse is installed).

https://packages.debian.org/experimental/firefox-esr

@stevepusser, thank you very much! :)
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#44 Post by TonyT »

I ran into this problem yesterday after upgrading FF to 52.01 from 51.01. In my research I read that the Release ESD version still has also support. Not sure about beta or other ESD versions. I rolled back to 51.01 for now rather than install PA. I'm running Stretch and MATE, installed piece by piece rather than selecting anything during install. I'd like to move to the beta or experimental versions but don't want PA.

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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#45 Post by stevepusser »

TonyT wrote:I ran into this problem yesterday after upgrading FF to 52.01 from 51.01. In my research I read that the Release ESD version still has also support. Not sure about beta or other ESD versions. I rolled back to 51.01 for now rather than install PA. I'm running Stretch and MATE, installed piece by piece rather than selecting anything during install. I'd like to move to the beta or experimental versions but don't want PA.
Let me get this straight...you'd rather use a browser version with known security flaws than use pulseaudio?

Have you considered apulse as an alternative to pulseaudio?
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#46 Post by TonyT »

stevepusser wrote:
TonyT wrote:I ran into this problem yesterday after upgrading FF to 52.01 from 51.01. In my research I read that the Release ESD version still has also support. Not sure about beta or other ESD versions. I rolled back to 51.01 for now rather than install PA. I'm running Stretch and MATE, installed piece by piece rather than selecting anything during install. I'd like to move to the beta or experimental versions but don't want PA.
Let me get this straight...you'd rather use a browser version with known security flaws than use pulseaudio?

Have you considered apulse as an alternative to pulseaudio?
Apulse will likely be the solution I select. I had trouble with PA when I was running earlier systems and have shyed away from it since. I like to build my system from the bottom up and only install what I need. Sounds works just fine using alsa. As for security flaws, the "flaws" in 51.0.1 are minuscule and the likelyhood of me ever encountering someone or a site that exploits them is near zero. But that's me, others may be more prone to getting exploited.

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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#47 Post by timbgo »

The news about apulse also spread to Devuan folks (I think it was golinux who told about it on the Devuan ML), and it is being installed in Devuan machines as well. So thanks!

But I just found a nice user criticism of Mozilla devs (btw, I moved to Palemoon, and _really_ have no regrets) at:
Firefox developers disrespect large swaths of users
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1352780

I'm posting it also because, even though they, afterwards, named me
(
by name and surname in the bug that I participated in, at:
Require PulseAudio to play sound on Linux
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.c ... 47056#c175
)
I am not allowed to post, even though I didn't do any more than post in the links that you can find in my previous posts in this topic, such as:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 28#p630102
[ that post is with links to Alsa ML (about Archlinux and much more), and also to Gentoo-user ML where I aired my views as well ]

I hope you'll find "Firefox developers disrespect large swaths of users" linked further above amusing and truthful. And you'll agree that banning posters for just criticism is plain wrong by Mozilla devs.

And I warmly suggest Palemoon (or Pale Moon) to readers. I like to say it really looks to me that Palemoon is an Angel of Honesty in comparison to Firefox. No surveillance on me did I find in Palemoon! And Firefox is suspicious!
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Re: Firefox nightly requires Pulse Audio

#48 Post by sjukfan »

In version 53.0.is.52.0.2-1, the one in Sid now, this pops up when you try to play sound.
Image

Seems to work fine with apulse except for a tiny sound delay that you only notice if you stare at people's mouth when they speak in a clip.
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Re: Firefox 53 (in Sid) requires Pulse Audio for sound

#49 Post by L_V »

Do you have at least just libpulse0 installed ?

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Re: Firefox 53 (in Sid) requires Pulse Audio for sound

#50 Post by stevepusser »

L_V wrote:Do you have at least just libpulse0 installed ?
Firefox now requires pulseaudio be running, or at least apulse to fool it. Libpulse alone is not going to do that.
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