Re: Tragic State of FreeBSD Audio/Sound

On Wed, 22 Jul 2026 02:25:08 +0300
"Christos Margiolis" <christos@freebsd.org> wrote:

> 
> I do not object to the fact that the change was invasive and broke
> scripts, but I do disagree completely that the new syntax is more
> confusing or worse. It can naturally support more functionality and is
> structured in a well-known format: foo.bar=value.
> 

Just to add my perspective, I would have preferred to have this change
introduced as something like "newmixer" or "mixer+", so the existing
interface wouldn't change (could be the same binary checking argv[0] to
determine behavior).

I'm the kind of person who regularly does things like

  ssh host mixer vol -10

and I was a bit disheartened when the decades old syntax/finger memory
now returned

  mixer: -10: no such device

(like: "great, now even adjusting the volume doesn't work like it used
to anymore, I'm feeling old").

I don't know how many people use mixer on the command line on a daily
basis - fixing your desktop keybindings once is not a big deal, but
forgetting and relearning syntax is - and I certainly wouldn't get out
of my way to insult anyone over this change, but I was definitely
astonished, so for me it certainly was an (avoidable) POLA violation.

Cheers
Michael

-- 
Michael Gmelin