apulse should not even exist

[ballerburg9005]

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/-/issues/1160

[crabctrl]

When PulseAudio merges a wrapper, then the viability of apulse can be reconsidered. In the meantime, apulse is the only working solution (and personally, I have very little confidence that the PulseAudio devs will ever fix this on their end). So, apulse should absolutely exist.

[timtas]

The question is rather whether pulseaudio should even exist. I'm running a Xfce - based linux desktop and I am perfectly fine with alsa, for watching movies, listening to music and all that stuff. No issues whatsoever, with google chrome, firefox, even zoom.
I only have to use apulse for signal-desktop, because they decided to only support pulseaudio. And for this, it works perfectly well.

So, I am very glad that apulse exists, it allows me to stay away from pulseaudio.

[keithbowes]

The question is rather whether pulseaudio should even exist.

Right, but to be fair, ALSA didn't have multiplexing when PulseAudio and other sound servers (including PulseAudio's predecessors, GNOME's ESD and KDE's aRts) were introduced; in fact, PulseAudio was a breakthrough at the time, so that GNOME and KDE didn't have separate sound servers and their apps could be used together. The real oddity is PipeWire. I mean, that really is a solution looking for a problem (sure, if I hadn't tried it out, my speakers probably wouldn't have blown up, but I suppose that was a blessing in disguise, because it's how I learned about ALSA multiplexing and started on my path to use ALSA directly when possible).

[keithbowes]

personally, I have very little confidence that the PulseAudio devs will ever fix this on their end

Especially now that PulseAudio is all but dead. The release notes for the latest version makes that clear.