first adopted by distributions, PulseAudio developer Lennart Poettering (also the creator of systemd) described it as "the software that currently breaks your audio". Poettering later claimed that "Ubuntu didn't exactly do a stellar job. They didn't do their homework" in adopting PulseAudio for Ubuntu "Hardy Heron" (8.04), a problem that was improved with subsequent Ubuntu releases. However, in October 2009, Poettering reported that he was still not happy with Ubuntu's integration of PulseAudio. Interaction with old sound components by particular software: Certain programs, such as Adobe Flash for Linux, caused instability in PulseAudio. Newer implementations of Flash plugins do not require the conflicting elements, and as a result Flash and PulseAudio are now compatible. Early management of buffer over/underruns: Earlier versions of PulseAudio sometimes started to distort the processed audio due to incorrect handling of buffer over/underruns. For headphone users, the potential for noise-induced hearing loss due to extremely loud volumes in the event of a misbehaving application. Related software Other sound servers JACK is a sound server that provides real-time, low-latency (i.e. 5 milliseconds or less) audio performance and, since JACK2, supports efficient load balancing by utilizing symmetric multiprocessing; that is, the load of all audio clients can be distributed among several processors. JACK is the preferred sound server for professional audio applications such as Ardour, ReZound, and LinuxSampler; multiple free audio-production distributions use it as the default audio server. It is possible for JACK and PulseAudio to coexist: while JACK is running, PulseAudio can automatically connect itself as a JACK client, allowing PulseAudio clients to make and record sound at the same time as JACK clients. PipeWire is an audio and video server that "aims to support the use cases currently handled by both PulseAudio and Jack". General audio infrastructures Before JACK and PulseAudio, sound on these systems was managed by multi-purpose integrated audio solutions. These solutions do not fully cover the mixing and sound streaming process, but they are still used by JACK and PulseAudio to send the final audio stream to the sound card. ALSA provides a software mixer called dmix, which was developed prior to PulseAudio. This is available on almost all Linux distributions and is a simpler PCM audio mixing solution. It does not provide the advanced features (such as timer-based scheduling and network audio) of PulseAudio. On the other hand, ALSA offers, when combined with corresponding sound cards and software, low latencies. OSS