From: Alistair John Strachan <s0348365@sms.ed.ac.uk>
To: Olivier Galibert <galibert@pobox.com>
Subject: Re: [2.6 patch] schedule obsolete OSS drivers for removal
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 17:16:13 +0000
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On Tuesday 03 January 2006 17:03, Olivier Galibert wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 04:29:21PM +0000, Alistair John Strachan wrote:
> > This has nothing to do with the kernel option CONFIG_SND_OSSEMUL which
> > Jan referred to, and to which I was responding. "aoss" is also not
> > compatible with every conceivable program.
>
> Especially not with plugins.  Flashplayer anybody?

Konqueror manages to "wrap" plugins quite happily.. complain to whoever makes 
your browser.

> > This is exactly why the OSS emulation option in ALSA is really a last
> > resort and should not be an excuse for people to ignore implementing ALSA
> > support directly. More so, it is very good justification for ditching
> > "everything OSS" as soon as possible, at least in new software.
>
> Actually the crappy state of OSS emulation is a good reason to ditch
> ALSA in its current implementation.  As Linus reminded not so long
> ago, backwards compatibility is extremely important.

This argument is basically watered down with devfs, udev, sysfs, etc. which 
all have exactly the same issues. Should a crippled OSS API be the way 
forward for Linux? I think not.
 
> Also, not everybody wants to depend on a shared library.  I find this
> "the alsa lib must be kept in lockstep with the kernel version" quite
> annoying.  I'd rather not have the windows dll hell on linux, TYVM.
> Or in other words, the public API of a kernel interface should _NEVER_
> be a library only.  At least OSS, with all its issues, had that right.

Okay, I agree it's not ideal. But if you want software mixing, and it's a 
genuinely useful feature, you either have to go down the road of running some 
crappy daemon like arts or esound, or just link against libasound and get it 
for free. I know I'd rather not have mixing routines in my kernel, thanks.

-- 
Cheers,
Alistair.

'No sense being pessimistic, it probably wouldn't work anyway.'
Third year Computer Science undergraduate.
1F2 55 South Clerk Street, Edinburgh, UK.
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