Firefox Quantum portable with apulse All-in

[fredx181]

Thanks Mike and Mike for reporting, investigating and giving solution.

I know very little about these "glib schemas", anyway updated first post with some info about the issue and a link to Mike Walsh's attached glib-2.0_schemas.pet

Probably it's not possible to include this in the portable (well... maybe , but I don't know how)

Fred

[B.K. Johnson]

I know that this is a thread about 64 bit, portable and apulse, but my success with 32 bit Quantum-64 without apulse may lead to an avenue worth exploring.

FWIW, this is the setup that works for me with Firefox-64.0 running on tahrpup-6.0.6 32 bit.

tahr-6.0.6 has pulseaudio-4.0-tahr606-i386 installed (I think out of the box).
In Startup, there is a link to apulsestart which resides in the path (I have it in /root/my-applications/bin).
apulsestart is a script that launches pulseaudio --start.

The only problem I have is that the volume needs to be increased after booting. I suspect ALSA needs to be changed. I haven't figured how to do that permanently.

[Mike Walsh]

Mm.

It would appear, from your post, that you're advocating using PulseAudio itself.....which, as I understand it, is the one thing Puppians in general are trying to avoid?

The trouble with using PulseAudio (if I have this correct) is that it adds a further layer of 'misdirection' to the proceedings. Which is why most mainstream distros, although they use it, don't, to my way of thinking, have such good sound quality. They all of them still use ALSA underneath all of this. Surely, it's better to engineer solutions that work with a more straight-forward setup, rather than try to fudge the issue further.?

I've said it before.....and I'll say it again. If we start down this 'slippery slope', we will end up, 'patch' by 'patch' by 'patch', re-writing Puppy into a clone of every other boring, mainstream distro out there.....and Pup will slowly but surely lose its unique identity.

I don't want to see that happen.. If Smokey01 & associates can manage to come up with an ultra-lightweight alternative to the now hugely bloated TeamViewer, I'm certain a permanent, long-term solution can be found that allows us to preserve the use of ALSA under all circumstances.

Just my two-penn'orth, FWIW.


Mike.

[B.K. Johnson]

It would appear, from your post, that you're advocating using PulseAudio itself.....which, as I understand it, is the one thing Puppians in general are trying to avoid?

You are wrong, Mike. I'm not advocating anything. pulseaudio came with tahrpup-6.0.6. Somewhere on this forum there was the instruction to do what I have done. As I noticed so many twists and turns about apulse, libgtk-3, mozilla:about etc. while I had no difficulty, I thought I'd share the success and invite you guys to explore.

If you can point me to the discussion(s) where Puppians discussed and generally agreed on the avoidance and reasons therefor, I'd like to read it, (just for my edification, you understand). From the stuff I remember reading, pulseaudio did not work in puppies and that sent us in search of alternate solutions.

If pulseaudio is off the table, and we are at a stage where the agreed alternative has a solid procedure, can someone please summarize. I appreciate Fred's offering, but I'd rather not be dependent on him to provide an archive when he can. No offense Fred.

[Mike Walsh]

Morning, B.K. Looks like I kinda owe you an apology...

You are wrong, Mike. I'm not advocating anything. pulseaudio came with tahrpup-6.0.6.

Yup; strike one. I've just opened up 6.0.6's ISO and had a look. The PulseAudio libs are there by default.

(I was in 606 last night when I posted. I had a brief look, but I couldn't have told you what was what; when Mozilla started all this stuff with needing PulseAudio for sound, I tried so many of the alternatives that were published.....and with not always uninstalling one lot before trying summat else, there's a right collection of Pulse & apulse stuff in there! I've no idea what was original and what I'd added myself... )

If you can point me to the discussion(s) where Puppians discussed and generally agreed on the avoidance and reasons therefor, I'd like to read it, (just for my edification, you understand). From the stuff I remember reading, pulseaudio did not work in puppies and that sent us in search of alternate solutions.

Strike two. I don't believe there ever were any specific threads along those lines (though there may have been; I do 'miss' stuff!).....but overall, during the last couple of years, I just get the impression that the majority of Puppians want to avoid PulseAudio if they can. The available 'workarounds', generally speaking, make that possible. If I had to point in the direction of a solid alternative, I've always found Oscar's 'apulse' stuff to do the trick for me.

From what I can gather, it's certainly possible to use PulseAudio in Puppy, but not 'OOTB'. There's a fair bit of script-editing, sym-linking & stuff that seems to need doing, For many Puppians, it's probably fair to say it's too much hassle.

Apologies if I implied otherwise. My late-night 'diatribes' don't always make much sense the following day.....even to me!

-------------------------

You might be interested in this; I've just come across a very informative diagram that shows exactly how all the PulseAudio components interact with the rest of your average Linux system. Gawd, it looks complicated.....you can see just how much extra crap Pulse seems to add to the mix.

https://rudd-o.com/linux-and-free-softw ... udio-works


Mike.

[Mike Walsh]

Just as an addendum to the above post, here's a very succinct overview of ALSA & Pulse that I found on the 'Linux questions' sub-Reddit, here:-

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions ... ulseaudio/

"Although you don't actually say it, I get the impression you think pulseaudio is a replacement for ALSA. This is not the case.

Pulseaudio is a sound server, and sits on-top of ALSA and provides a layer of abstraction that allows for more advanced functionality than ALSA can provide alone.

ALSA is an API for communicating with a soundcard that the kernel exports to userspace, and as such ALSA is:

a) very close to the hardware (and therefore there's differences in what is exported depending on what the hardware is capable of)

b) it's device-centric. If you want two or more soundcards to communicate with each other, you need something "above" ALSA to do it (Ie. a sound server)

If you think about it there's all sorts of everyday desktop scenerios that demand more than ALSA can offer alone. The most common are:

Per-application controls.

Audio mixing on soundcards that don't support mixing natively.

Moving a sound stream between devices (switching between onboard soundcard and USB headset).

Then you've got the more advanced stuff.

Splitting a 6-channel soundcard into 3 seperate stereo soundcards (think multi-seat and virtualisation for use-cases for this)

Re-routing sound output over a network to another machine."

It's certainly clarified a few things for me, and supports what I said above about every distro that uses Pulse still needing ALSA underneath it all. If I have it right, ALSA is an integral part of the kernel 'user-space'(?) HAL - hardware abstraction layer - and PulseAudio sits on top of that. (I may have some of the terms incorrect here, but that's my interpretation).

If Jack is used, it sits on top of ALSA, but underneath PulseAudio.

Seems a lot of the antagonism toward PulseAudio stems from some of the more forward-thinking distros 'adopting' it in its very early days, while it was still full of bugs....

"Early PulseAudio was pretty buggy. Doing everything it does well is a hard problem to solve and it took a while to mature, some distros adopted it prematurely and it broke sound for a lot of people."

Now you're perhaps as 'wise' as me.... (*shrug*)

-------------------------------

The overall consensus seems to be that if ALSA alone works for your personal desktop use-case, that's great. PulseAudio should be an option if you want greater, more fine-grained control over your audio hardware. Which is fine, too.

The problems have arisen through many of the larger distros and projects arbitrarily deciding that PulseAudio will henceforth be a compulsory dependency, whether the end-user wants it or not. Sounds to me like just another case of the devs coming up with pointless, additional crap (that sounds good to project- and team-leaders), in order to justify their continued existence.....

I also can't help wondering it it's a simple case of some leading distros (I'm thinking Ubuntu here, since Shuttleworth sees it as a direct Windoze competitor) trying to provide as standard what always needs 3rd-party add-ons to achieve in Windows. Not everybody wants that kind of complexity, though, so.....why can't it remain 'optional'?


Mike.

[B.K. Johnson]

Strike one! Strike 2! Hmm. You're a great batter Mike. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. Next ball thrown at you will probably be out of the park.

Thanks for the link from which you quoted. Interesting! But, in choosing excerpts to buttress your point, you omitted this significant point, but picked it up in your follow up. Foul ball!

Pulseaudio is a sound server, and sits on-top of ALSA and provides a layer of abstraction that allows for more advanced functionality than ALSA can provide alone.

And below are some of the special uses ?which ALSA does not provide. [They don't mean a thing to me.]

If you think about it there's all sorts of everyday desktop scenerios that demand more than ALSA can offer alone. The most common are:

Per-application controls.

Audio mixing on soundcards that don't support mixing natively.

Moving a sound stream between devices (switching between onboard soundcard and USB headset).

Then you've got the more advanced stuff.

Splitting a 6-channel soundcard into 3 seperate stereo soundcards (think multi-seat and virtualisation for use-cases for this)

Re-routing sound output over a network to another machine

And from another source:

It allows you to do advanced operations on your sound data as it passes between your application and your hardware. Things like transferring the audio to a different machine, changing the sample format or channel count and mixing several sounds into one are easily achieved using a sound server

.http://sourcedigit.com/22673-install-pu ... -equalizer.

So there is need for pulseaudio (sound server) for particular services. Neither you or I or most Puppians may need them but others do.

From these quick reads it seems to me, that the biggest problem is that developers do not assess the needs of their software and willy-nilly force the use of pulseaudio when ALSA by itself would suffice. If ALSA alone is good enough for your use case, then use it. When an esoteric needs demands the use of pulseaudio because ALSA cannot provide it, then by all means use it. If pulseaudio doesn't need to be there in the first place, leave it out; don't force users to use it. But the mantra is "Linux is about choice", so give the user the option. There is an apt phrase that provides the solution to the dilemma: horses for courses.

I would guess that "sit on-top" mean it uses ALSA for lower level work. That being so, then the ALSA APIs are available for system calls. This, I think, supports my point that smart developers need not jump on the "full" pulseaudio, but use the underlying ALSA APIs to achieve their goals.

Do we Puppians realize that pulseaudio is now at version 12.2? The version in tahr-6.0.6 is 4.0. The bugs of 4 years ago should be gone by now; don't we want to find out? Why don't the compiling gurus take a crack at it? Wish I were adept, but I have been warned.

Typically PulseAudio would be provided by your OS distribution. As PulseAudio forms part of what is typically preferred to as the plumbing layer of Linux userspace, it is a non-trivial job to integrate it fully to form a complete system. This is why we strongly encourage you to go via your distribution whenever possible.

Mike you keep adding while I draft offline. So, I did not see the last addition at the end of your second post.

[fredx181]

If pulseaudio is off the table, and we are at a stage where the agreed alternative has a solid procedure, can someone please summarize. I appreciate Fred's offering, but I'd rather not be dependent on him to provide an archive when he can. No offense Fred.

Yes, OK, better to be independent and make your own setup, so trying to "summarize" what's needed for to run the latest Quantum and using apulse instead of pulseaudio:
- Download Firefox from here:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
Extract (at this time it's: firefox-64.0.2.tar.bz2) and new directory "firefox" will appear.
- Install apulse .pet package, if not already installed
32-bit download:
http://www.smokey01.com/OscarTalks/apul ... 686-wz.pet
64-bit download:
http://www.smokey01.com/OscarTalks/apul ... x86_64.pet
- Install libgtk-3.0 and libatomic1 from PPM
libgtk-3 may be not available in all puppies, Mike Walsh provided a .pet package for precise:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 764#989764

After done that, run firefox with apulse, e.g. if firefox is extracted as /root/firefox (but can be anywhere of course):

Code: Select all

apulse /root/firefox/firefox

EDIT: Forgot to mention, the above setup example is not "portable", the profile directory will be "~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxx.default" directory.

Fred

[fredx181]

Hi All, updated to 64.0.2, see first post for new download links.

I found that automatic updating from 64.0 to 64.0.2 didn't work, a small change in the "ff" script did fix it.

To make possible to update from existing 64.0 install you can also replace the "ff" script with the one attached below.
Remove fake .tar extension and make executable first.

Fred

[B.K. Johnson]

Thanks for responding Fred. And the summary is clear and concise - Excellent. Since you say that 64.0.2 has been released, I'll use that version as my guinea-pig. Postmortem on the pig later.

[B.K. Johnson]

Hi Mike
I read the addendum to your post. I think we agree in essence. What I think we disagree on is motive. Whereas you see malevolence:

...many of the larger distros and projects arbitrarily deciding that PulseAudio will henceforth be a compulsory dependency, whether the end-user wants it or not. Sounds to me like just another case of the devs coming up with pointless, additional crap (that sounds good to project- and team-leaders), in order to justify their continued existence.....

and,

I also can't help wondering it it's a simple case of some leading distros (I'm thinking Ubuntu here, since Shuttleworth sees it as a direct Windoze competitor) trying to provide as standard what always needs 3rd-party add-ons to achieve in Windows.

I seee the powers that be as just lazy and unthinking.

In the end I agree with

Not everybody wants that kind of complexity, though, so.....why can't it remain 'optional'?

except I'd say needs instead of wants.

[mikeslr]

Hi fred and Mike Walsh,

Considering Mike Walsh's discover regarding "libgtk3" and the pet he made available here: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 50#1016950 are the links to Mike's gtk3 pet here, http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 010#978010 and here http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 23#1015023 still the recommended choice?

Or am I mixing 'apples and oranges'?

'tother MIke -- or as its seems now that there are about 6 of us bouncing around, 'nother Mike

[Mike Walsh]

Hi, Mike.

As it stands, it seems the Precise libgtk-3.0 package is still the best solution for older Puppies. However, I came across a variation on the 'problem' the other day.....

Amongst other Pups in the kennels, I'm running peebee's 'UPup Bionic'. Now, I've been a 'bad boy'; I haven't religiously 'upgraded' it every time Peter's released yet another 'delta' and/or ISO for it.....and, to be perfectly honest, I can't be arsed to; there's been something like 25 of them!

I'm running, I believe, the +2 or +3 release.....from many months ago.

Anyway; I was attempting to get Oscar's current 32-bit package of Iron 69 running in this version of UPupBB. And I was getting the error message that's becoming quite common when attempting to run recent Chromium-based browsers (though usually, in older Puppies):-

Code: Select all

symbol lookup error : undefined symbol gtk_widget_get_scale_factor

You can read about my escapade with it here.

-------------------------------------------------

The upshot was that I needed to use a newer version of libgtk-3.0 to get Iron69 working in UPupBB.....which was strange, because I got it running in both Xenial 7.0.8.1 and Tahrpup 6.0.6 without any drama; seemingly, the version of GTK3 that Phil supplied with these was new enough to keep Iron 69 happy. I have a feeling the 'problem' may have been of my own making, however!

-------------------------------------------------------

I'll post current links to both packages here; I'm slowly migrating everything away from my MediaFire a/c to my Google Drive.

Precise LibGTK-3.0

Stretch LibGTK-3.0

Caution:- Please note; don't use the newer Stretch package in older Puppies; if you do, it then appears to introduce other, unrelated issues.

Use the Precise package for older Pups.
Use the Stretch package for newer Pups.


Mike.

[kuman11]

fred,

it's possible the save file could mess up Quantum? I can't start it with the ff script after I booted up with the save ...
I've d/l the latest Q.

[fredx181]

fred,

it's possible the save file could mess up Quantum? I can't start it with the ff script after I booted up with the save ...
I've d/l the latest Q.

I wouldn't know why it would mess up, can you give more details about how you did your setup ?
(e.g. is the portable Quantum part of your system e.g. in /opt or do you have it elsewhere, e,g, in /mnt/home)
Also, what's the output of "ff" when you run it from terminal ?

Fred

[kuman11]

it's ff

# ff
bash: ff: command not found

[kuman11]

fred,
I wouldn't know why it would mess up, can you give more details about how you did your setup ?
(e.g. is the portable Quantum part of your system e.g. in /opt or do you have it elsewhere, e,g, in /mnt/home)
Also, what's the output of "ff" when you run it from terminal ?

Fred

it's a folder under /root/firefox32

[Mike Walsh]

@ kuman11:-

/Root's a bit of a silly place to have it, in my opinion. Far better to have it in /mnt/home, then symlink the /firefox32 directory into /opt. Once you've done that, you can use my Menu entry .pet for it to place a menu entry into Menu->Internet. That way, it's not occupying 'Puppy-space'.

See attached.


Mike.

[fredx181]

it's ff

# ff
bash: ff: command not found

Use full path, e.g.

Code: Select all

/root/firefox32/ff

Or from terminal standing in your firefox32 directory:

Code: Select all

./ff

Sorry, I could have been more clear about it earlier.

Fred

[kuman11]

Both ways got me errors.