User Frustrations Over The "Tragic State of FreeBSD Audio/Sound" Support
This long-running mailing list thread began with a user being frustrated over a regression later in the FreeBSD 14 series that has remained at least as of FreeBSD 15.1 where there were "LOTS of sound/audio related things." There would be "random boozing sounds" from unknown sources. And other audio playback problems. This wasn't with some state of the art hardware either but an aging ThinkPad from nearly a decade ago.
"But these random 'boozing' sounds are just unacceptable ... and I can not even tell where they came from ... is it OSS problem? Is is PulseAudio problem? Something in between? Because there is NOTHING in the logs for audio.
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... and its not some fancy laptop from yesterday ... its a ThinkPad T480 from 2018 for fuck sake - hardware like that used to run smooth as Carlos Sainz 'smooth operator' in Singapore GP ... but not anymore."
The mailing list thread went from there with some other users also venting their frustration over audio problems on FreeBSD. Some have been resorting to using AI/LLMs for hunting down audio code troubles on FreeBSD. Some attribute their audio pain points to using PulseAudio.
While not an immediate solution, the FreeBSD Foundation has been sponsoring development work on improving the audio driver support. That is part of the effort for improving FreeBSD on laptops. Patches improving the audio support for FreeBSD have been gradually landing and some attribute that as potentially the cause for the recent uptick in audio-related problems with landing changes incrementally over time rather than landing the big audio rework once it's all completed and properly vetted.
So while FreeBSD graphics and WiFi drivers have been seeing much attention lately, there is also work happening behind the scenes on the audio support. Hopefully in due course the FreeBSD audio support will be in good shape as an important aspect of the desktop experience.
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