Firefox 52 has landed

Princess Nell · l33t Joined: 15 Apr 2005 Posts: 916

So, has the Gentoo maintainer taken any steps to re-enable ALSA support? I see nothing along those lines in the ebuild directory.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1345661

fcl · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 31 Dec 2016 Posts: 77

I can't test it right now but looking at the firefox-52.0.1 ebuild, it does seem that the maintainer(s) overlooked the ALSA/Pulse situation.

There needs to be a alsa/pulseaudio USE that flips the support, ie. mozconfig_use_enable alsa (IIRC)

edit: firefox's ebuild has EAPI=6 so it should be easy to patch locally
edit2: btw, firefox-52 uses mozconfig-v65.eclass (located in /usr/portage/eclass/) that has mozconfig_use_enable pulseaudio but nothing about alsa.. it should be enabled here by the maintainers methinks..

edit3: I made a bug report, https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=613370

Cthulhu666 · Apprentice Joined: 02 Apr 2004 Posts: 195

Just re-emerged Firefox 52 with USEFLAG "pulseaudio" disabled and thus sound was restored.

I want to wholeheartedly thank the Gentoo devs for making this possible.

But what do we do in the future? The Mozilla devs seem committed to destroying the usefullness of Firefox by forcing their users to use pulseaudio. Many Linux users have battled with PA and lost. It's just too much trouble and too little reward (in most cases no reward, unless you count wasted resources and sound latency as rewards...), to be worth the bother. Will Firefox be forked into a usable version with ALSA support, will the Gentoo devs patch ALSA support back in or will we be forced to choosing another browser?
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depontius · Advocate Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 3509

I've used "apulse" to run Skype. I'm not sure what apulse does, but in at least that one situation it fills the need. It almost seems that pulseaudio should be a virtual, but be satisfied by either pulseaudio or apluse.

Along what line, what would possibly go wrong if my session were to be started with apulse? The idea would be to provide the service session wide, but somehow I'll be that's not what would happen.
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musv · Advocate Joined: 01 Dec 2002 Posts: 3337 Location: de

apulse was designed as a workaround especially for Skype. I tried it, when I wanted to get Tombraider running, whose sound support is also limited to Pulseaudio. There was no chance to get it working with apulse.

I guess, apulse is just a kind of wrapper, which provides the necessary Pulseaudio interfaces, needed by Skype.

Regarding Firefox:
I remember the OSS support removal some years ago. At this time, I was using OSS4. Firefox and Seamonkey used (still use?) the same buildconfig files. So the patch to re-enable OSS was the same for both applications. The OSS support was (and maybe is) still available for the BSD version. It was only disabled in the Linux version. I guess, we have a similar situation now.

Nevertheless after some months of patching I gave up and switched to Alsa. Hopefully Pulseaudio won't supersede Alsa completely. Pulseaudio has to much flaws.

depontius · Advocate Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 3509

I've just been looking at the firefox bug linked above, and the general response seems to be, "Why don't you want to install pulseaudio?" (You IDIOT!!!)

Since they're not going to listen to preferences, there is another reason. (I think.) JACK. Pulseaudio simply doesn't meet the needs of professional audio - JACK is for that. I just looked, and there appear to be ways to layer pulseaudio on top of JACK, but they might be beyond the abilities of casual users.

It might be a good idea if someone referenced JACK in the bug.
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Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

Funny thing happened just now - I opened firefox after updating and it gave me a nag bar saying “audio might not work without required pulseaudio” blah blah blah... which is already running. Good software, Mozilla.

depontius · Advocate Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 3509

Mitigating factor... Some time back I read that pulseaudio is much less troublesome these days. Some would say that happened after L.P. lost interest in it and passed it off to someone else. I'm much more likely to succumb to pulseaudio given that consideration. I still keep avahi off of my machines. The mere concept of "service discovery" gives me the willies. It seems that the concept is to assist MITM.
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Chiitoo · Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 12:58 pm Post subject: ><)))°€

I believe 'apulse' should work, as it has been updated for this exact purpose.

I don't use Firefox these days, but I have 'bin-52.0.1' for the occasional testing. As such, I did give apulse a go, but it doesn't seem to be doing its thing here. The version available via Portage at this time (0.1.9) isn't quite up to 'master', but I did try patching in the changes, which so far didn't seem to help.

Regardless, I'd suggest trying it out. :]

ff11 · l33t Joined: 10 Mar 2014 Posts: 664

Chiitoo · Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 6:50 pm Post subject: Re: ><)))°€

turtles · Veteran Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 1657

I too have run an ALSA only system for years.
It seems like the devs at Firefox are open to distros supporting ALSA:
[url]https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.platform/jRAqSTri66I[/url]
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Leio · Developer Joined: 27 Feb 2003 Posts: 494 Location: Estonia

turtles · Veteran Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 1657

Chiitoo · Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 1:54 pm Post subject: €°(((><

turtles · Veteran Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 1657

Syl20 · l33t Joined: 04 Aug 2005 Posts: 619 Location: France

Enabling telemetry is a Firefox config option.

One problem is that many "advanced" users, including these who intentionally don't use Pulseaudio, often disable this kind of data collection. I do, anyway.
Another problem is that Lubuntu, for example, by default, doesn't provide Pulseaudio, _and_ turns Firefox's telemetry off. So the "one-percent" is problably largely underestimated.

Anon-E-moose · Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2017 9:26 am Post subject:

I'm running the 45 version right now and using oss4 without any problems.

Will the 52 version run with oss4?
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Anon-E-moose · Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2017 9:58 am Post subject:

Yamakuzure · Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2017 3:09 pm Post subject:

Leio · Developer Joined: 27 Feb 2003 Posts: 494 Location: Estonia

Of course ALSA can support 5.1 and full duplex when PA works with it. As I said, it's about the firefox cubeb components ALSA backend. It is not maintained and therefore also lacks support for new features of cubeb under that backend. Features such as full duplex (think webrtc), 5.1 surround sound and content sandboxing. Eventually something in firefox makes these features non-optional and alsa cubeb backend won't be acceptable at all, unless someone from the community actually implements the necessary improvements. Meanwhile if you opt to build firefox with alsa instead of pulseaudio, you might miss out on these features and then blame Firefox or Gentoo for it.
See e.g https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1345661#c83
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Syl20 · l33t Joined: 04 Aug 2005 Posts: 619 Location: France

Anon-E-moose · Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 9:26 am Post subject:

I'll ask again, Will the 52 version run with oss4?
Does sound work with the bsd variants?
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musv · Advocate Joined: 01 Dec 2002 Posts: 3337 Location: de

turtles · Veteran Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 1657