Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS released [LWN.net]

Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS released

Posted Jul 4, 2008 14:20 UTC (Fri) by wertigon (guest, #42963)
Parent article: Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS released

I wonder when the Linux world will realise that a modern, GPL:ed sound API exists that works
in nearly all UNIXes and makes all sound servers (with the possible exception(s) of jackd and
pulseaudio) obsolete, and would make the entire Linux sound scene a much, much happier place
to live in?

Talking, of course, about the Open Sound System v4. http://www.opensound.com/

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Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS released

Posted Jul 4, 2008 14:28 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Last time I looked at it, it was really mmap()/ioctl()-happy. Not good.

Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS released

Posted Jul 4, 2008 21:41 UTC (Fri) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]

Last time I looked at it, it did not do 4-channel output for cs46xx. (And now it is too late,
distros switched to ALSA and ALSA is what is suppoted.)

Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS released

Posted Jul 4, 2008 15:26 UTC (Fri) by joib (guest, #8541) [Link]

OSS had their chance years ago, and blew it [*]. For better or worse, we're stuck with ALSA
for the foreseeable future.

[*] Open sourcing OSS and replacing OSS/Free with it before ALSA gathered steam.

Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS released

Posted Jul 4, 2008 18:34 UTC (Fri) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link]

Wait, why are we stuck with it?  Are you saying that OSS people were jerks back then and now
we're going to punish them by continuing to ignore their software?

Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS released

Posted Jul 4, 2008 19:31 UTC (Fri) by joib (guest, #8541) [Link]

No, I'm not saying they should be "punished". Actually, I find the idea of Linux users somehow
collectively deciding to punish OSS by using ALSA because they've been bad to us in the past
as somehow hilariously absurd.

What I'm saying is that there is a cost to switch, and while I don't claim any particular
expertise in either ALSA or OSS, if not anything else, the lukewarm reception to OSS being
finally being open sourced suggests that it's not good enough (compared to ALSA + the cost of
transitioning) to be worth bothering about, now that the Linux world has more or less
completely transitioned to ALSA.

Now, back before ALSA was around, if they had open sourced OSS then I suspect it's likely it
would have been the default choice, and perhaps ALSA would never have been born. But that's
not how things turned out.

Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS released

Posted Jul 15, 2008 17:29 UTC (Tue) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

pulseaudio usage is supposed to be transparent to applications that already target ALSA;
unfortunately, PulseAudio's ALSA module sometimes expose quirks in the way applications use
the ALSA API; it's not bug-for-bug compatible.

IIRC, a long-term goal is to merge pulseaudio and jack.