How to Remove Pulse Audio Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)

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By default Ubuntu 8.10 comes with Pulse Audio and most users start complaining about pulse audio so if you don't want to use Pulse Audio you can remove using the following procedure.

Remove the required packages

sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio

sudo apt-get install esound

Now remove the 70pulseaudio file

Before removing make a backup of this file

sudo cp /etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulseaudio /etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulseaudio.back

sudo rm /etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulseaudio

Gnome Preferences

Now go to System -> Preferences -> Sound

Make sure they are all set to ‘Autodetect'.

The only one you will have to set manually to ALSA is ‘Sound Capture' under ‘Audio Conferencing'.

Note:-At this point Pulseaudio is now nolonger an option under these drop menus.

Gnome Sessions

Go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions

Deselected or Remove the Pulseaudio Manager

Finally Your asoundrc's under your Home Directory are still configured for Pulse.

Go to your home directory using the following command

cd ~

cp .asound* yourfilename

rm .asound*

One this is done your back to ALSA's default configuration.

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38 Responses

  1. Ryan Hayle says:

    There’s a lot of FUD being spread in this article. Obviously PulseAudio works quite well for a *lot* of people, including myself, and most of the users of Ubuntu and Fedora. Some people have issues with it which are bugs that should be solved, instead of merely removing it to avoid the problem. Of course this gets tricky when you use proprietary software like Skype–but that’s par for the course when you don’t have the source! (Yes, I know…I apologize)

    I would never want to give up PulseAudio. It lets me transfer my audio from my laptop to my TV to my bluetooth headset and back again. This is the best feature as far as I’m concerned. You can even stream the audio from one computer to another easily.

    Obviously if your sound is not working right, it is a problem that you want solved. But don’t jump to bad, rash advice as in this article. Try to actually solve your problem first, only remove PulseAudio as a last resort! Especially for newbies, who should absolutely not remove the ubuntu-desktop package.

  2. Ryan Hayle says:

    FYI–I find it hilarious that the awful ad software you have added to this website highlighted the words “proprietary software” in my post above with an ad for Sun! Not a very flattering link! They are certainly one of the giants of closed-source software, even though they’re trying to play catch-up now by opening up Solaris and Java.

  3. robert3353 says:

    “There’s a lot of FUD being spread in this article. Obviously PulseAudio works quite well for a *lot* of people, including myself, and most of the users of Ubuntu and Fedora. Some people have issues with it which are bugs that should be solved, instead of merely removing it to avoid the problem. Of course this gets tricky when you use proprietary software like Skype–but that’s par for the course when you don’t have the source! (Yes, I know…I apologize)”

    Ryan, as far as I am concerned there are other issues with Ubuntu, not just their use of Pulse Audio. My recommendation if you are having difficulty with your sound using Ubuntu is to ditch the whole distro from your system and instead pick say the latest release of Mepis. Yes I know that this sounds rather radical but trust me it is a lot easier than trying to get your audio working with Pulse if it does not work with your system. Let the other people who love pain solve the issues with Pulse and move on so you can enjoy your Linux experience. Mepis is based upon Debian and DOES NOT USE PULSE AUDIO and to me the most important is it still maintains a traditional Root account that one can log into when you plan on doing several different system admin jobs instead of having to log in with each thing you want to do when using Ubuntu. Also Mepis to me is just as user friendly as Ubuntu is. The only reason Ubuntu is more popular is that it gets more press.

  4. LMB says:

    Good. Hope this helps. I don’t see a point in investing my time into something useless (“networked sound server project”).

  5. Amanda says:

    Honestly pulse audio is too cpu hungry for my taste, also it didn’t play nice with some of my other software. This really helped me get the linux experience that I wanted. Esound fit my computer usage better. Thanks for the how to!

  6. Dhalgren says:

    I can see a networked sound server being useful, just not to me right now. If I want one I’ll install one. My needs are A) working sound in all apps on my work machine and laptops, and B) low-latency stable sound for studio work. Pulseaudio currently provides neither. Alsa provides good, stable, works-with-everything sound and for the studio stuff jackd fits the bill perfectly.

    From where I sit I would much rather see pulse and jackd as options, with alsa the default.

    As it is, the first thing I do on a new install is check for pulse and if found, disable and/or remove it.

    I’m sure it’s very nice for people who need what it does and are willing to live with its drawbacks. For me it solves no problem I’m having and causes some I don’t want.

  7. Fred says:

    @robert3353: PulseAudio works fine for most people and it’s better to fix the bugs that some people encounter than dump it for something else. If everyone does this, bugs won’t get fixed.

    As for using a separate root user on Ubuntu, this is really quite trivial to enable: “sudo passwd root” then specify a password, then you can login to root as much as you like.

  8. Ulrik says:

    @Fred; about the “fix it, don’t replace it” argument; you know, the same could be said for ALSA dmix, which is being replaced with pulse right now, instead of having it’s OSS mmap-problems fixed.

    Some people will always be more interested in solution A or solution B.

    Personally, pulse have been a source of problems on all my computers, for the last 4 ubuntu-revisions in a row. So personally, I’m glad people offers me the choice to just remove it when it’s causing problems.

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