Datamation examines the Debian and Ubuntu distros in detail by starting with the question, what is the difference between Debian and Ubuntu? Neither GNU/Linux distro has been out of Distrowatch's top six since 2005, and for the last four years neither has been out of the top three. There are good reasons for that. Though if systemd is not your cup of tea, there is also a Debian fork, Devuan, which is basically Debian GNU/Linux minus systemd.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:11PM (2 children)
Some people have more than one sound card (a common example being if you're using a TV as a monitor, as you end up with both the native sound card and the hdmi output), and may want some audio being played on one device while other audio is simultaneously playing on another device (say, so you can do your voice calls over your headset while playing music via the TV's output). To the best of my knowledge, this can only be done with pulseaudio or jack, and pulseaudio generally tends to be less painful to set up (TERRIBLY PACKAGED DEFAULTS notwithstanding...besides, these have mostly been fixed over the last few years).
It's still not that pulseaudio is great in this situation, but it does occasionally show up as the lesser of available evils.
(Score: 2) by KiloByte on Thursday July 20 2017, @01:16AM (1 child)
I have music playing via speakers, while headphones are the default sound device that I use for voice calls, games and such. Both work at the same time with plain ALSA just fine -- what's your problem? In fact, it would be impossible for PulseAudio to support simultaneous sound had ALSA not allow it.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @04:00PM
Likely their "headphones" is a USB soundcard with headphones soldered directly to the audio pins.
Thus whenever they plug in, Alsa has to deal with the appearance of a whole new sound device.