The Unbearable Anger of Broken Audio

It should be surprising to absolutely nobody the Linux audio stack is often the subject of varying levels of negative feedback, ranging from drive-by meme snark to apoplectic rage^[1].

A lot of what computers are used for today involves audiovisual media in some form or the other, and having that not work can throw a wrench in just going about our day. So it is completely understandable for a person to get frustrated when audio on their device doesn’t work (or maybe worse, stops working for no perceivable reason).

It is also then completely understandable for this person to turn up on Matrix/IRC/Gitlab and make their displeasure known to us in the PipeWire (and previously PulseAudio) community. After all, we’re the maintainers of the part of the audio stack most visible to you.

To add to this, we have two and a half decades’ worth of history in building the modern Linux desktop audio stack, which means there are historical artifacts in the stack (OSS -> ALSA -> ESD/aRTs -> PulseAudio/JACK -> PipeWire). And a lot of historical animus that apparently still needs venting.

In large centralised organisations, there is a support function whose (thankless) job it is to absorb some of that impact before passing it on to the people who are responsible for fixing the problem. In the F/OSS community, sometimes we’re lucky to have folks who step up to help users and triage issues. Usually though, it’s just maintainers managing this.

This has a number of … interesting … impacts for those of us who work in the space. For me this includes:

1. Developing thick skin
2. Trying to maintain equanimity while being screamed at
3. Knowing to step away from the keyboard when that doesn’t work
4. Repeated reminders that things do work for millions of users every day

So while the causes for the animosity are often sympathetic, this is not a recipe for a healthy community. I try to be judicious while invoking the fd.o Code of Conduct, but thick skin or not, abusive behaviour only results in a toxic community, so there are limits to that.

While I paint a picture of doom and gloom, most recent user feedback and issue reporting in the PipeWire community has been refreshingly positive. Even the trigger for this post is an issue from an extremely belligerent user (who I do sympathise with), who was quickly supplanted by someone else who has been extremely courteous in the face of what is definitely a frustrating experience.

So if I had to ask something of you, dear reader – the next time you’re angry with the maintainers of some free software you depend on, please get some of the venting out of your system in private (tell your friends how terrible we are, or go for a walk maybe), so we can have a reasonable conversation and make things better.

Thank you for reading!