Mozilla Firefox and Pulseaudio (Linux)

[darry1966]

Hello I'm running Firefox 60.5.1 on puppy linux and wonder if is possible to switch from pulse-audio to the default alsa that comes in puppy. In other words be able to make sound work in Firefox using alsa instead of pulse-audio?

I know this is an old issue but I have used an older browser till now and wondered if there is an option in about:config to achieve this.

[James]

The official builds of Firefox since 52.0 and later has been requiring Pulseaudio as 51.0 and earlier used ALSA as a fallback.

There is a possibility of trying to use apulse

[darry1966]

Yes just found this on this page.
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 39#1021839
of the murga forums however I'd still like to know if there is away to change this in firefox internally such about:config

[darry1966]

Ok created a script to run the browser with apulse command I am a happy camper with this using apulse
code
#!/bin/sh
apulse /opt/firefox/firefox

[James]

No backend support for Alsa so nothing like toggling a Preference in about:config

[darry1966]

I would have preferred the about:config idea and Mozilla should have put that option in.

[mightyglydd]

There are plenty of threads about this at Puppy Forums.

FYI: Some unpleasant reading on the subject here
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1345661

[darry1966]

There are plenty of threads about this at Puppy Forums.

FYI: Some unpleasant reading on the subject here
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1345661

Yes well hardly surprising when a company providing a product that supposed based on freedom, bulldozes the needs of users to have sound in video playback or have something that works now broken. Then on top of that not want to know about it.

[Gusar]

Pulse vs. ALSA is a compile-time option. The big distros have chosen Pulse. For lightweight distros such as Puppy, the maintainers could be convinced to choose ALSA. If not, one person in the Puppy community needs to do a compile with ALSA and then share that with the rest. Quite simple really.

[darry1966]

Thats all very well but it doesn't change the fact that it should have been an option in about:config instead of hard coding this is supposed to be the world of open source and free software Firefox made this way is neither.

[Gusar]

Thats all very well but it doesn't change the fact that it should have been an option in about:config instead of hard coding

No, that's far from a fact. That's just your wish. And it was available as a run-time option, but there were bugs regarding that. Because of that, and for a few other reasons, Mozilla switched to a compile-time option.

this is supposed to be the world of open source and free software Firefox made this way is neither.

Open source doesn't mean developers are obliged to implement whatever you desire or that you can demand that they implement things for you. It merely means that the source code is available to you.

Free software doesn't mean that either. Free software means you are granted the four essential freedoms as described by the Free Software Foundation: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html <- note how those mostly talk about the ability for *you* to do things, it doesn't place any burden on the developers of the software you're using.

[mightyglydd]

EDIT:

one person in the Puppy community needs to do a compile with ALSA and then share that with the rest. Quite simple really.

Yes very 'simple', a work around appeared the same wasted day, that's not the point and why I now use Chromium on all my Linux OS's.

[Frank Lion]

Thats all very well but it doesn't change the fact that it should have been an option in about:config instead of hard coding this is supposed to be the world of open source and free software Firefox made this way is neither.

Too bad, it is what it is. You complaining will achieve nothing.

This is the Firefox Support forum, not a 'discussion' forum.