pulseaudio_medHah! Got you there! Oh wait – it’s true.

Yup folks, thanks to the new bluetooth stack in slackware-current (brought to you by BlueZ 5.x) we have introduced a dependency on PulseAudio. Bluetooth audio no longer accepts ALSA as the output driver.

So, Pat has added a pulseaudio package and with it, a lot of dependency packages: ap/pamixer l/alsa-plugins l/atkmm l/cairomm l/glibmm l/gtkmm3 l/json-c l/libasyncns l/libsigc++ l/pangomm l/speexdsp xap/pavucontrol and finally xfce/xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin…

Also, we have a Beta!

Wed Jan 13 00:01:23 UTC 2016
Also, enjoy a shiny new LTS 4.4.0 kernel and consider this 14.2 beta 1.

Coming back to PulseAudio: the alsa-plugins package ensures that ALSA applications can remain unaware that PulseAudio is now handling audio in- and output. A file “/etc/asound.conf” will be installed by a recompiled “alsa-libs” package. This configures Pulse as the default audio device. Please take care in case you created a “/etc/asound.conf” yourself that you have to merge yours with the freshly installed “/etc/asound.conf.new” !

Several other Slackware core packages needed a recompile against PulseAudio, but note that you may not have to. As said before, ALSA output still works transparently, it’s just that ALSA’s output is now an input for PulseAudio which in turn controls your audio hardware.

Yes, some people will be opiniated. We invited the Devil into our house and stuff. Well, PulseAudio is not maintained by Lennart anymore, and saner people took the helm. We expect no big mess as a result, just a learning curve to understand the new sound configuration. And truthfully, we were left no choice. The alternative would have been to say bye-bye to bluetooth in Slackware because already, major pieces of software are dropping or preparing to drop support the old and incompatible BlueZ 4.x API.

Note: Slackware is NOT going to add systemd. It’s too controversial and there is no need. Your sleep will be sound now.

People who installed the Jack audio connection kit should probably carefully evaluate the possible changes to their configuration. I stopped using “jackd” here  so I can not tell you at the moment.

Happy hacking! Eric