> Is this not the job of the operating system or its supporting parts, to deal with audio from various sources

I think that's the point? In practice the OS (or its supporting parts) resample audio all the time. It's "under the hood" but the only way to actually avoid it would be to limit all audio files and playback systems to a single rate.

I don't understand then, why they need to deal with that when making a game, unless they are not satisfied with the way that the OS resamples under the hood.

My reading is not that they're saying it's something they necessarily have deal with themselves, but that it's something they can't practically avoid.

But they CAN practically avoid it. lol. Just let the system do it for them.

If my audio files are 44.1kHz, and the user plays 48kHz audio at the same time, how do I practically avoid my audio being resampled?

You cannot avoid it either way then, I guess. Either you let the system do it for you, or you take matters into your own hands. But why do you feel it necessary to take matters into your own hands? I think that's the actual question that begs answering. Are you unsatisfied with how the system does the resampling? Does it result in a worse quality than your own implementation of resampling? Or is there another reason?

I suppose, if you interpret "avoid" as "not care about".

I interpret them to mean "avoid doing it oneself" not "avoid it happening entirely".

> This isn't really a drawback

But, that's only true because people freely resample between them all the time and nobody knows or cares about it.

> Unless I'm missing something?

I suppose the option you're missing is you could try to get pristine captures of your samples at every possible sample rate you need / want to support on the host system.

Do you have a link about the case you're quoting? I can't find any reference to it.

So I guess my next question is, why are all your recent comments saying things that are obviously and unambiguously not true? These things are all trivial to check, and it's not like nobody is calling you out on it. I don't get what's in it for you.

There's a version of this where you make your case (which IMO is, at its core, based on reasonable concerns) without relying on obviously untrue statements. Why not try that?

As a long-time Linux user I've also felt an incongruity between my own experiences with Wayland and the recent rush of "year of the Linux desktop" posts. To be fair, I think the motivation is at least as much about modern Windows' unsuitability for prime time rather as Linux's suitability. I haven't used Windows for a long time so I can't say how fair that is, but I definitely see people questioning 2026 Windows' readiness for prime time.

For me, Wayland seems to work OK right now, but only since the very latest Ubuntu release. I'm hoping at this point we can stop switching to exciting new audio / graphics / init systems for a while, but I might be naive.

Edit: I guess replacing coreutils is Ubuntu's latest effort to keep things spicy, but I haven't seen any issues with that yet.

Edit2: I just had the dispiriting thought that it's about twenty years since I first used Ubuntu. At that point it all seemed tantalizingly close to being "ready for primetime". You often had to edit config files to get stuff working, and there were frustrating deficits in the application space, but the "desktop" felt fine, with X11, Alsa, SysV etc. Two decades on we're on the cusp of having a reliable graphics stack.

>I just had the dispiriting thought that it's about twenty years since I first used Ubuntu. At that point it all seemed tantalizingly close to being "ready for primetime".

I feel the same and find it a bit strange. I am happy with hyprland on wayland since a few months back but somehow it reminds me of running enlightenment or afterstep in the 90s. My younger self would have expected at least a decade of "this is how the UI works in Linux and it's great" by now.

Docker and node both got started after wayland and they are mature enterprise staples. What makes wayland such a tricky problem?

I too share your sense of incongruity .

But then I try and focus on what each author thinks is important to them and it’s often wildly different than what’s important to me.

But a lot of internet discussion turns into very ego-centric debate including on here, where a lot of folks who are very gung-ho on the adoption of something (let’s say Linux, but could be anything) don’t adequately try and understand that people have different needs and push the idea of adoption very hard in the hopes that once you’re over the hump you might not care about what you lost.

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 25.10, and decided to give Wayland another go since X.org isn't installed by default anymore.

Good news: My laptop (Lenovo P53) can now suspend / resume successfully. With Ubuntu 25.04 / Wayland it wouldn't resume successfully, which was a deal breaker.

Annoying thing: I had a script that I used to organize workspaces using wmctrl, which doesn't work anymore so I had to write a gnome-shell extension. Which (as somebody who's never written a gnome-shell extension before) was quite annoying as I had to keep logging out and in to test it. I got it working eventually but am still grumpy about it.

Overall: From my point of view as a user, the switch to Wayland has wasted a lot of my time and I see no visible benefits. But, it seems to basically work now and it seems like it's probably the way things are headed.

Edit: Actually I've seen some gnome crashes that I think happen when I have mpv running, but I can't say for sure if that's down to Wayland.

I've dodged multiple work opportunities on ethical grounds, although I can only think of one time where it was a big deal (I think we had to turn down a client because I declined to work on it).

I'm wondering if you missed that the site has checkboxes for "No charge" and "FOSS".

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HIS BODY!?

Edit: I don't know about these specific lines, but this script was co-written by the great and recently deceased Tom Stoppard

The issue here is, "physical" is a misleading word. Digital works are also held on physical media. The distinction is whether the work is stored on a dedicated physical object.

Edit: I suppose a jukebox confuses things as I think it belongs in the "physical media" box, but it isn't dedicated to a specific work. Hmm.