Re: [2.6 patch] schedule obsolete OSS drivers for removal

Alistair John Strachan
2006-01-03T14:33:03Z

On Tuesday 03 January 2006 13:58, David Lang wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Jan 2006, Andi Kleen wrote:
> >> 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.
> >
> > Avoiding bloat is more important.
>
> given that the ALSA drivers are not going to be removed, isn't it bloat to
> have two drivers for the same card?

Normally this isn't too big a deal in Linux; eventually one gets removed, but
not until it is substantially inferior than the other (or broken, or not
compiling, or unmaintained..).

> yes, an individual compiled kernel may be slightly smaller by continueing
> to support the OSS driver, but the source (and the maintinance) are
> significantly worse by haveing two drivers instead of just one.

If there are two separate maintainers it's probably not a lot worse. I think
the argument pretty much has to remain "ALSA drivers are technically
superior, OSS drivers have unfixable limitations", and that should be a good
enough reason to see them removed.

Perhaps Andi's concerns about ALSA bloat could also be concerned. I don't know
enough about the "high end" features of ALSA to comment on whether they could
become optional (currently there are few driver-generic options in the
Kconfig file).

--
Cheers,
Alistair.

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