Mute PC Speaker by default

[lnussel]

SUSE has a preset to mute the PC speaker by default as it can be quite annoying (https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=767270). Would it make sense to include that upstream?

[lnussel]

came up due to systemd/systemd#23520 (comment)

[perexg]

As opposite, it will require an extra step from users to enable the PC speaker by default. We can get complains, that the PC speaker does not work by default. But I think that you're trying to resolve the consequence rather than the origin (the wall noise cannot be suppressed) of the systemd issue.

[lnussel]

I assume both is true. The beep in wall messages is just as useless as the pc speaker and the combo is just plain annoying :-)
The speaker was muted in openSUSE ten years ago, probably when sysvinit still beeped by default. Not sure how many complaints @tiwai got

[perexg]

Every user has own preferences. Saying that the PC speaker is useless is not a general rule. But I don't have a strong opinion about this (just feeling that the silence may be worse than do something by default). Perhaps, it would be better to discuss this settings on the alsa-devel mailing list: https://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php?title=Mailing-lists

[tiwai]

The main disturbance at that time I introduced it (over a decade ago!) was Thinkpads and other laptops that have no volume control but only produced the loudest beep. The beep volume might be present but not always actually working, depending on the hardware implementation.

I'm also not fully convinced by which way is better, so the workaround has remained distro-specific, so far. OTOH, we haven't had much complaints about the lack of default PC beep from distro users.