openQA VS apulse

I sometimes look at https://openqa.opensuse.org/ when I'm excited for a new package release (example, kernel 6.5) just to see how far along the next snapshot is. While this is interesting, I can't seem to figure out which packages will be in the snapshot when I do this.

anyway, one great thing about SUSE is openqa.opensuse.org/ which does automatic testing that updates work before releasing....and every pkgs is build using Open Build Service (OBS) which is great as that makes sure Distro has more consistent/automatic binary built

I use Tumbleweed since years and although rolling, its more stable than Pop ever was for me. Stable in the sense of daily use and upgrading in particular. Every update you get on OpenSuse is, as a TLDR version of an explanation, run through an automated AI process that checks if everything works, only then the update is pushed out. The AI analyzes pictures of the OS to check. For example, it goes through the boot process and sees if it works, then clicks on certain apps like yast and see if they open, comparing whats shown on screen with a reference picture. You can see whats currently going on in terms of testing here.

I value Greg KH's Tumbleweed. It does everything I want. Thanks to build.opensuse.org and openqa.opensuse.org . If I had to start from scratch, MicroOs, I would learn along the way.

Rolling release players? openSUSE Tumbleweed (backed/tested by OpenQA before released), EndeavourOS (Arch with an installer; however, this could be too advanced when it breaks)

I would recommend openSUSE (KDE) tumbleweed you get the newest pkgs and they are well tested and they have great tools like openQA, obs, YaST etc. and if you have issue with any updates you can easily just rollback to latest working snapshot

And even though Arch stability heavily depends on the user and package maintainers doing everything right (I'm looking at you TimeShift), openSUSE, being backed by a company, have way more resources and robust infrastructure for ensuring their system is stable than Arch does (I have said this a couple of times, SUSE's openQA is incredible).

Tumbleweed is very current - well, as current as your last update.g/ This means that it's very rare that something is rolled out to the community that hasn't been tested as working.

Most of my audio comes from Firefox, Steam, and other random miscellaneous programs. I'm wondering if I can rely on apulse for this? If I need to do some configuration that's more than okay, but if it's super buggy or hardly works then it's not worth the trouble. If anyone has experience with apulse I would love to hear more about it.

I read this and my first thought is "oh shit, is Firefox about to stop working?"

some of us like our software to be stable and reliable, and not switch to the newest bullshit just because they can. I'm still bitter about being forced to find a workaround for FF requiring pulseaudio. Am I now gonna need to find a workaround for this? I run FF 94 right now, and will upgrade with trepidation...

(shoutout to https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse. THANKS.)

Rather than re-compile firefox, maybe take a look at https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse which provide a shim to eliminate pulse.

Firefox does use PulseAudio for output. I don't run an ALSA-only setup, but I believe you can use apulse to emulate PA over ALSA for specific applications like so: apulse firefox

When launching the binary set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include the oldlibs directory, e.g. LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/badsector/oldlibs. Some very old games may also need older versions of C++ library, you can find those in some older distros' "compat" packages, e.g. this one from SuSE 9.1 will contain most files you'll need - do not install the package, just extract the needed files. A few games may need convincing to use these files, use LD_PRELOAD for that. In addition some games may use OSS instead of ALSA so you'll need a wrapper. An OSS-to-PulseAudio wrapper is often available and you can preload it either with padsp (which will only work with the native version though, so no 32bit apps in 64bit linux) or doing it manually with LD_PRELOAD (which is basically what padsp does). There should be OSS support module for plain ALSA too if you do not have/want PulseAudio (or you can extract the relevant libraries from the padsp and use them with apulse).

apulse?

I think there are a lot more than your two solutions, for example there is apulse to run pulseaudio applications on top of ALSA. Of course your bluetooth headset will probably not work well with that, you'd still need another daemon like pulseaudio or pipewire to get good results there.

I don't think that's important. In practice you can also use the pulseaudio API and that will work everywhere because of this: https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse

This has been a life saver for me on GNU/Linux https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse