Bug 1431371

Sorry but Pulse is default audio backend now. If you want something else you just need to rebuild FF from srpm and change the option. You can also build that in COPR and provide such repo to others. But official Fedora package uses Pulse now.

Could we at least enable the alsa backend in F25? We have a policy on updates in stable branches and it says "Avoid changing the user experience if at all possible.". Breaking sound is a major change in the user experience.

As for F26 and later, if the support in firefox must be removed, the best option for users that don't use pulseaudio would probably be the apulse emulation. It seems to be working nicely with firefox.

https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse

(In reply to Miroslav Lichvar from comment #2)
> Could we at least enable the alsa backend in F25? We have a policy on
> updates in stable branches and it says "Avoid changing the user experience
> if at all possible.". Breaking sound is a major change in the user
> experience.

That can be done for F24 only because 24 EOLs soon. The alsa backend is not maintained by mozilla any more and it's going to be removed in some future version.  

Fedora 25 is going to be EOL by end of this year which is pretty long time from Firefox perspective (we'll have FF58-59 by this time). 

I'm pretty sure the ALSA backend is going to be broken sooner or later and maybe even removed before F25 EOL. In that condition we better disable it right now and don't ship Firefox with possible broken backend.
 
> As for F26 and later, if the support in firefox must be removed, the best
> option for users that don't use pulseaudio would probably be the apulse
> emulation. It seems to be working nicely with firefox.
> 
> https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse

We'll update the Firefox specfile to just easily enable ALSA by one switch. I hope that helps to people who still want to use ALSA backend.

(In reply to Martin Stransky from comment #3)
> That can be done for F24 only because 24 EOLs soon. The alsa backend is not
> maintained by mozilla any more and it's going to be removed in some future
> version.  

Ok, but that didn't happen yet.

> Fedora 25 is going to be EOL by end of this year which is pretty long time
> from Firefox perspective (we'll have FF58-59 by this time).

Have you considered following the ESR releases? There should be one based on 52. Maybe that would help with the user experience (and I don't mean just this issue with sound).

> We'll update the Firefox specfile to just easily enable ALSA by one switch.
> I hope that helps to people who still want to use ALSA backend.

I'm not sure how much will that help. I suspect most users are not interested in recompiling Fedora packages on every update, especially larger ones like firefox. I certainly won't be doing that.

Anyway, here is a copr repo for the pulseaudio emulator. I'm just building the 0.1.8 release. After installing the package, running firefox with "apulse firefox" should make sound working again.

https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/mlichvar/apulse/

(In reply to Miroslav Lichvar from comment #4)
> > Fedora 25 is going to be EOL by end of this year which is pretty long time
> > from Firefox perspective (we'll have FF58-59 by this time).
> 
> Have you considered following the ESR releases? There should be one based on
> 52. Maybe that would help with the user experience (and I don't mean just
> this issue with sound).

No, Fedora is about new features and development. ESR is used in enterprise distros. If there's a community need for that (provide copr repo for instance) I'm keen to help.

> > We'll update the Firefox specfile to just easily enable ALSA by one switch.
> > I hope that helps to people who still want to use ALSA backend.
> 
> I'm not sure how much will that help. I suspect most users are not
> interested in recompiling Fedora packages on every update, especially larger
> ones like firefox. I certainly won't be doing that.
>
> Anyway, here is a copr repo for the pulseaudio emulator. I'm just building
> the 0.1.8 release. After installing the package, running firefox with
> "apulse firefox" should make sound working again.
> 
> https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/mlichvar/apulse/

Great, Thanks for the info.

http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/firefox.git/ says
"2017-03-13	Enable ALSA backend behind pref (rhbz#1431371)"

Does that mean I can enable ALSA without recompiling Firefox myself?
If so, how?

(In reply to T-Gergely from comment #6)
> http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/firefox.git/ says
> "2017-03-13	Enable ALSA backend behind pref (rhbz#1431371)"
> 
> Does that mean I can enable ALSA without recompiling Firefox myself?
> If so, how?

It means there is "alsa_backend" pref in spec file which you can easily turn on and rebuild the package.

I understand that the maintainer is not willing to undertake the responsibility to support the alsa backend. Nevertheless this is a very serious bug.

Did anybody find or work on a workaround (external builds, fake pulse wrapper around alsa etc)? Do we have to switch to a different browser?

(I am currently keeping my version fixed at 51, of course this is not a sustainable solution)

(In reply to Orcan Ogetbil from comment #8)
> Did anybody find or work on a workaround (external builds, fake pulse
> wrapper around alsa etc)? Do we have to switch to a different browser?

Look at comment #2, it links to a wrapper you want.