On Wednesday, 22 October 2025 23:21:56 British Summer Time Carsten Hauck wrote: > On 22/10/25 at 08:31, Alan Mackenzie wrote: > >Hello, Javier. > > > >On Wed, Oct 22, 2025 at 21:59:11 +0200, Javier Martinez wrote: > > > >[ .... ] > > > >> And some good news for you: Someone had to maintain pipewire to allow > >> non pulseaudio users to have sound in firefox thanks to some developers > >> that impose dependencies in one audio system discarding others. And in > >> that question systemd and pulseaudio are very responsible by it's way of > >> doing things. > > > >Well, I haven't really paid much attention to such things, but I've got > >sound in firefox, and both pulseaudio and system-pipewire are disabled. > > > >Maybe the firefox build is automatically enabling pulseaudio for me, or > >something equally wicked. > > > >> Without all damage done by systemd developers maybe it would be just > >> need to compile firefox to use standard sound system without requiring > >> "a sound daemon". > > > >I agree with you. I don't know what a "sound daemon" is; what it does, > >what it's for. It seems to me to be a redundant daemon adding no > >functionality. It is more fat (as opposed to muscle) in the system, and > >must be an extra place where security problems can occur. > > > >Up to my newest machine (August 2024), alsa has always worked well for > >me. > > > >But if anybody can explain what a "sound daemon"'s for, what I can do > >with it that I couldn't do without it, I'm all ears. > > This matches my experience. All my Gentoo machines have been ALSA-only > and sound just works. > > Carsten
Without a sound daemon/server, or without configuring dmix in an alsa only system, the sound device will play sound from one source at a time. A sound server allows different sources to access the sound device and via some front end offers independent volume adjustments for each source.
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