Firefox 53 (in Sid) requires Pulse Audio for sound

[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.

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.

[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:
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=130028#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!

[sjukfan]

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


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.

[L_V]

Do you have at least just libpulse0 installed ?

[stevepusser]

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.

[L_V]

I don't have pulseaudio installed, and sound is working fine in Firefox 57 in Debian stretch.

[sjukfan]

apulse is now in Sid.

For apulse to work with Firefox 57 /dev/snd/ has to be added to security.sandbox.content.write_path_whitelist in about:config as stated here

[Segfault]

57 built from source, no apulse, still have sound.

[andoru]

Same here, although I'm not compiling it myself. Also I switched to Waterfox.

[Nili]

It's a misfortune For a while I found another solution (browser switching).

[sjukfan]

If I remember it correctly they're leaving the alsa code in for now but they're not updating it. And the plan is to remove it in version 5-something. Until then you can compile it yourself with

Code: Select all

--disable-pulseaudio --enable-alsa

[L_V]

removed by mistake. I edited this one instead of replying (see next message).

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Could someone refresh a little bit how to get sound from Firefox without pulseaudio ?

I've just purged PulseAudio from my Arch box and Firefox (v57) went mute, installing the apulse package brings back the noise for me.

Presuming the same applies to a Debian system try stevepusser's version:

https://software.opensuse.org//download ... age=apulse

I can personally vouch for the skills of the package maintainer, he is great

EDIT: the apulse package is actually available in testing/unstable so you should be able to install the .deb.

EDIT2: I've thrown apulse into my Arch openSUSE repository (if that makes sense) so anybody with an Arch-based system (including ArchLabs, Manjaro and Antergos) can install it from there, I will be using it myself so it will be kept updated:

https://software.opensuse.org//download ... age=apulse

[L_V]

Now I try Firefox 57 from SID in Stretch ... => no sound.
I added apulse [from SID]

installing the apulse package brings back the noise for me. Presuming the same applies to a Debian system try stevepusser's version

Do you mean apulse from SID is not fine ?
A changelog would be welcome so that Debian developers update apulse from SID.
------------------------
EDIT: after trying again during hours to manage headphone output with pulseaudio without any success (tried everything known), I have tried again apulse form SID, and it works fine, but this should be known
Instead of simply launching firefox, this should be done:

Code: Select all

apulse firefox

=>> apulse from SID is just fine

BTW, I cannot understand how pulseaudio is supposed to manage very complex things, but not able to manage correctly a VERY basic configuration with just one speaker output + headphone output.
Forums are full of complaints about headphone output management with pulseaudio, and difficult to understand that pulseaudio is still so buggy in 2017.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Hey, good news fellow PA-h8ers: the new upstream version of QEMU (2.11) now has PulseAudio as a dependency

I've compiled a local package without the dependency for my Arch box but now I have no sound in QEMU

Debian sid is still on 2.10 so something to look forward to, eh?