The case for the /usr merge [LWN.net]

The case for the /usr merge

Posted Jan 30, 2012 1:40 UTC (Mon) by slashdot (guest, #22014)
In reply to: The case for the /usr merge by sbergman27
Parent article: The case for the /usr merge

dmix won't be enabled if Pulse is active, in sane distributions, obviously.

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The case for the /usr merge

Posted Jan 30, 2012 19:40 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (1 responses)

But ALSA will be there. (Is anyone using OSS?) So PA's "functionality" is still redundant in this capacity.

The case for the /usr merge

Posted Feb 2, 2012 8:54 UTC (Thu) by keeperofdakeys (guest, #82635) [Link]

ALSA is incapable of software mixing, the dmix plugin handles this. So PA isn't redundant in this capacity.

As for OSS, no one uses it directly (or at least shouldn't). Many programs will use the OSS emulation offered by ALSA (which doesn't support software mixing). The interesting thing about OSS is that it was originally open source, became closed, and became open source again with version 4. Although, now we have shifted to ALSA, it will probably never be as popular.