[SOLVED] using pulseaudio only for firefox

[powettpt]

I know that firefox has been requiring pulseaudio for a while (in order to get sound at least...).

My objective is to have pulseaudio only for firefox and absolutely nothing else. Unfortunately pulseaudio "polutes" everything in my configs. From automatically handelling pluging/unpluging of devices, creating Dummy audio devides (which completely breaks my alsa configs by moving the real device from Card 0 to Card 2), changing the volume in an unpredictably (for me, i.e. doesn't use my astore default config), and a few more reasons that are pointless to enumerate.

Is there a way to have this type of config? Thanks!

[Ionen]

While upstream wants you to use pulseaudio, you can get sound from firefox without pulseaudio. Even with firefox-bin the ebuild can use patchelf (modifies the binary when USE="alsa -pulseaudio") to cause it to automatically use media-sound/apulse's library which will output sound through libasound(alsa) instead.

If building firefox, then there is native ALSA and JACK support that can be built in (alsa is enabled automatically if pulseaudio is disabled), however that support is a bit dodgy/untested at times. I personally recommend to stick to apulse (or pulseaudio proper). Edit: Handled a bit differently but if apulse is installed when USE=pulseaudio is set, will create some symlinks so it gets used. Build apulse with USE=sdk to install headers so pulseaudio isn't needed at all.

That aside, it's more work, but personally I do run real pulseaudio only for some things and have pulseaudio sink to JACK rather than ALSA (if not using JACK, then sinking to ALSA's dmix is also a option, so that it won't hold the card -- will lead to more sound latency though). I personally leave it running and load only 3 modules without any dbus/elogind/systemd/udev/consolekit/etc.. support, and don't have USE=pulseaudio globally so that things like alsa-plugins don't install pulse configuration and the like.

[powettpt]

thanks! many great options. firefox with native alsa (pa disable) doesn't work for me, unfortunately.

having PA sink to alsa dmix would also manipulate my alsa configs? or they would be left alone? if so sounds my best option. btw, I have global USE=-pulseaudio, and firefox is the only package enabling it, but this still pulls alsa-plugins with pulseaudio enabled

[mike155]

Which version of Firefox do you use?

I use www-client/firefox-68.7.0-r1 and it works perfectly fine with ALSA.

If I had to install Pulseaudio just to be able to use Firefox, I would certainly switch the browser.

[Ionen]

[powettpt]

great, thanks for all the help (I use ff75)

[mike155]

Ionen, thanks for the detailed summary!!!

[The Main Man]

[powettpt]

[The Main Man]

[powettpt]

[The Main Man]

Okay, then you must have something playing in the background (using the device) , you need dmix
In /etc/asound.conf place this :

[powettpt]

this is amazing, the sound works! thanks so much!!

unfortunately the microphone does not : (. arecord gived me:

[The Main Man]

Yeah I forgot about mic, sorry about that.

Unfortunately I can't help you with a mic, maybe someone else can.

[powettpt]

no problem, you really helped a lot already. thanks a lot, and all the best for you!

[mike155]

I emerged and installed Firefox 68, 75 and 76 (www-client/firefox).

All three versions of Firefox work perfectly fine with ALSA. apulse and pulseaudio are NOT required. Neither for building Firefox, nor for running Firefox.

[shevy]

> I know that firefox has been requiring pulseaudio for a while (in order to get sound at least...).

Yeah unfortunately. That was actually the reason why I abandoned firefox. Not the change itself,
but I complained about it, and the mozilla guy wrote something along the lines that distributions
not using pulseaudio don't count (aka "most use pulseaudio"). That was for me the final straw
that broke the squirrel's back.

Most I know workaround this partially by using pulseaudio shims. I went to palemoon instead -
not saying it is perfect, mind you, I understand the issues that palemoon has and I am not
claiming palemoon is perfect - but I don't want to enter the Google empire and use
adChromium, nor do I want to have anything to do with Mozilla anymore after that
"conversation" with the developer who crippled non-pulseaudio. Sound output via youtube
works just fine, ublock origin works fine, all on palemoon - so it is perfectly usable for me.

There are problems, yes, but mentally these problems are less severe to me than having
to use adChromium, or deal with Mozilla, so it is still an improvement (for me).

But in the long run, we really really really need to have more diversity and choice here, since
the www is sooooo important. Google sort of bulldozers over everything right now like
an unstoppable force.

> All three versions of Firefox work perfectly fine with ALSA. apulse and pulseaudio are NOT
> required. Neither for building Firefox, nor for running Firefox.

Yeah, I also use different versions of firefox. Whenever I use firefox where audio works,
I get annoyed at the mozilla dev who lied that it is not possible to have audio output
without pulseaudio ... (to clarify: while I do not really use firefox, I do have multiple
versions available on my system, for various reasons, e. g. the GoboLinux approach
to have versioned AppDirs, and sometimes you are forced to use a specific browser,
so I actually have vivaldi too, which is adChromium - but whenever I can, which is
about 99.5% of the time, I just use palemoon. Still it would be so great if we could have
a versatile, open www, without having private groups control so much of the flow of
information these days. Reddit is also an example where discussion is stifled and you
can get banned if you don't have the same opinion that others have)

[powettpt]

[nsoveiko]

[Ionen]

[nsoveiko]

[Ionen]

[Princess Nell]

So the 68 ESR ebuild is broken wrt usability with apulse. Is there a bug report yet?

I've always been a staunch defender of firefox, but for some aspects it has become less usable over time. One of these aspects is audio support for collaboration. $work has switched to webex during lockdown, and it was not usable during WFH with ff 68/ESR due to frequent loss of audio. In fact, even after returning to the office, the problem persisted, can't blame the home broadband connection for it.

Now I revisited the issue with ff 68.11, and webex stopped working altogether with "cannot connect to computer audio". At the same time, audio consumption, e.g. youtube, works fine.

Then I decided to go down the apulse road, but it can't be done with 68/ESR. Upgrading to ff 79 with apulse, and the "computer audio" connection issue is resolved, webex appears to work, which I will need to test in a real meeting.

[Ionen]

You can still use apulse[-sdk] with firefox 68, but you need to install pulseaudio anyway of headers/libraries (you just wont have to actually run it).

For what it's worth, firefox 68 will be replaced by 78 ESR probably around next month+ or so (maintainer says Q3 2020 for the switch not to rush things), and will likely carry over apulse[sdk] changes unless they're judged not stable-ready, maintainer would know better if anything up with this.

[Princess Nell]

I will stay on 79 as I finally have a setup that works for my purposes. The only remaining problem is now that the browser just hangs when finishing a meeting, requiring a kill and restart. But I can live with that for the time being.