Linux Audio Works Better on Mars Than on Earth
Description
This image is a screenshot of a tweet by Andy Bennett (@databasescaling). The text of the tweet reads: 'OH: "Mars has a higher proportion of Linux devices with working audio than any other known planet in the universe."'. 'OH' stands for 'overheard'. The humor is a deeply layered in-joke for the tech community, especially those familiar with Linux. It references the fact that NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars runs on Linux and has successfully recorded audio. This is contrasted with the long, painful history of configuring audio on desktop Linux systems, a task notorious for its complexity due to driver incompatibility and confusing sound servers like ALSA, PulseAudio, and now PipeWire. The joke's punchline is that it was easier for NASA to get audio working on a different planet than it is for a typical user to do so on Earth, hilariously highlighting the poor state of Linux desktop audio support
Comments
20Comment deleted
Earth: Billions of Linux devices, audio is a 50/50 gamble. Mars: A handful of Linux devices, pristine audio recording. Clearly, the signal-to-noise ratio is just better without end-users and their esoteric hardware
After 20 years of ALSA → PulseAudio → PipeWire, NASA finally discovered the real fix for Linux audio: a 54-million-kilometre air-gap to Mars
The real reason we're colonizing Mars isn't for humanity's survival - it's because after 30 years, we've finally found a planet where PulseAudio doesn't randomly decide your HDMI output is now a microphone at 3am during a production incident
The beauty of this observation is that it's technically correct - the best kind of correct. Mars rovers run Linux flawlessly because they don't need audio drivers, which is exactly the workaround every Linux desktop user has considered after their fifth PulseAudio reinstall. It's the ultimate 'works on my machine' scenario: just deploy to Mars where the requirements don't include sound. NASA accidentally solved Linux audio by launching it to a planet with no atmosphere to carry sound waves - a more elegant solution than any amount of ALSA configuration could ever achieve
Linux audio works best on Mars - apparently the stack stabilizes once you’re 1.5 AU away from Bluetooth, HDMI, and the PulseAudio/JACK turf war
Earth's Linux servers: headless. Mars rover: mic'd up and recording symphonies at 4 light-minutes latency
Amazing what happens when you control 100% of the hardware matrix and there are zero Bluetooth headsets within 225 million kilometers - the Linux audio stack suddenly looks production-ready
Realtek >:( Comment deleted
Oh... Comment deleted
i havent had any problems with linux audio this side of 2015, 7 years ago Comment deleted
I have Comment deleted
I've had some problems as well: JACK doesn't seem to like me at all, portaudio is mostly broken, pulse works perfectly, except in LMMS, SDL2 works mostly, and all that didn't change once I installed the pipewire equivalents. I really hope pipewire will fix some of that stuff though, because I'd really like to have proper low-latency audio. Comment deleted
oh and OSS only started to work after I've installed pipewire, which was kinda neat, but still. Comment deleted
ive fortunately never had to use jack. always heard problems with it Comment deleted
it's the only good low-latency audio solution on Linux up until pipewire afaik Comment deleted
i remember hearing people having to fight with it in a later signals processing class i didnt have to take Comment deleted
I just gave up installing it eventually. Didn't get a toot out of the mfer Comment deleted
i only ever use pulseaudio and its worked fine for years. its default on most distros Comment deleted
ye, it works ok. It just has quite some delay & consumes a lot more resources than necessary. Comment deleted
complaining about ancient problems like theyre modern day back in my day we had to install pavucontrol and alsamixer and unmute our audio to make it work ok old man Comment deleted