Getting the perfect PulseAudio setup in Ubuntu 7.10 isn’t hard. It’s basically installing a bunch of packages and editing a config file, then making sure ALSA is using PulseAudio instead of ESD.

The problems are these: there’s no metapackage that installs all the needed utilities, modules, and libs; the GUI tools pretty much suck; and there is no usable documentation that I could find for the base install or the GUI tools. The metapackage should be easy enough to implement, but the GUI tools need lot of work. The documentation needs to be created.

PulseAudio is a great idea. It’s well-implemented (afaict) at the system level. It enables the user to do a lot of pretty cool things, like sending audio to different computers. I would very much like to see it replace ESD, but before it can really do that, it needs a lot of usability tweaks.

For instance, “sinks” may be a nice technical name for where the daemon sends the sound, but the difference between sources, server, and sinks will probably be lost on the target audience of the Ubuntu distribution. These differences should either be elaborated with end-user oriented language, or the less-accesed hidden from view in a less visible part of the interface.

Ideally, I’d like to see a graphical representation of the possible output locations, much like the graphical representation of filesystems and available drives in the “Computer” dialogue. I could select “Send sound to” with a check box, and select multiple locations if I wanted to, something that’s difficult to do with the available user tools. Or alternately I could select, “Get sound from”, which would pick up the sound on an available server. Volume controls, server management, RTP multicast, default servers, all these things could be placed in an options dialogue. Much like, for instance, when a user is selecting a Metacity theme. Padevchooser is too technical, t0o complicated, and it lives in the tray: stop making things too technical, too complicated, and for the love of all that is holy, stop making things live in the tray! I already have a volume control there: that’s enough, thank you very much.

With these usability tweaks, I think PulseAudio would be ready for prime-time. Maybe even for Hardy Heron + 1.

Tags: ideas, linux, pulseaudio, Ubuntu