Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751130AbWACNrZ (ORCPT ); Tue, 3 Jan 2006 08:47:25 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751384AbWACNrZ (ORCPT ); Tue, 3 Jan 2006 08:47:25 -0500 Received: from mail.metronet.co.uk ([213.162.97.75]:39352 "EHLO mail.metronet.co.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750913AbWACNrY (ORCPT ); Tue, 3 Jan 2006 08:47:24 -0500 From: Alistair John Strachan To: Andi Kleen Subject: Re: [2.6 patch] schedule obsolete OSS drivers for removal Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 13:47:19 +0000 User-Agent: KMail/1.9 Cc: Adrian Bunk , perex@suse.cz, alsa-devel@alsa-project.org, James@superbug.demon.co.uk, sailer@ife.ee.ethz.ch, linux-sound@vger.kernel.org, zab@zabbo.net, kyle@parisc-linux.org, parisc-linux@lists.parisc-linux.org, jgarzik@pobox.com, Thorsten Knabe , zwane@commfireservices.com, zaitcev@yahoo.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <20050726150837.GT3160@stusta.de> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200601031347.19328.s0348365@sms.ed.ac.uk> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2476 Lines: 55 On Tuesday 03 January 2006 13:21, Andi Kleen wrote: > Adrian Bunk writes: > > Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt | 7 + > > sound/oss/Kconfig | 79 ++++++++++++--------- > > 2 files changed, 54 insertions(+), 32 deletions(-) > > > > --- > > linux-2.6.13-rc3-mm1-full/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt.old > >2005-07-26 16:50:05.000000000 +0200 +++ > > linux-2.6.13-rc3-mm1-full/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt 2005 > >-07-26 16:51:24.000000000 +0200 @@ -44,0 +45,7 @@ > > +What: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS_DRIVER > > +When: October 2005 > > +Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements > > +Who: Adrian Bunk > > I object to the ICH driver being scheduler for removal. It works > fine and is a significantly less bloated than the equivalent ALSA setup. > > This means ac97_codec.c also has to stay. I think this is probably true for quite a few of the OSS drivers, versus their ALSA equivalents. The fact is that OSS is obsolete, and the ALSA libraries and utilities provide, to all soundcards, more features than the OSS API could. Maybe it's more bloated, but it's about time applications on Linux didn't have to support 2-3 audio APIs just so they'd work on more than 50% of systems. It strikes me that it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Vendors are still releasing applications on Linux that support only OSS, partly due to ignorance, but mostly because ALSA's OSS compatibility layer allows them to lazily ignore the ALSA API and target all cards, old and new. Additionally, we can't get rid of OSS compatibility until pretty much all hardware has an ALSA driver, and (inferred from your comment) we can't get rid of OSS drivers until nothing supports OSS, because the whole of the ALSA stuff is a bit larger... Even if Adrian's not trying to make this point (he's just removing duplicate drivers, and opting for the newer ones), we accepted ALSA into the kernel. It's probably about time we let OSS die properly, for sanity purposes. -- Cheers, Alistair. 'No sense being pessimistic, it probably wouldn't work anyway.' Third year Computer Science undergraduate. 1F2 55 South Clerk Street, Edinburgh, UK. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/