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

Jan Engelhardt
2006-01-03T14:38:09Z

>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...
>
By OSS compatibility, do you mean the OSS PCM emulation layer (/dev/dsp)? I
think that should be kept. That way, legacy apps keep working, especially
unmaintained binary-only things like Unreal Tournament 1.

The OSS emulation does not depend on the OSS tree (CONFIG_SOUND_PRIME), so I
cannot quite follow your second paragraph - we should not remove OSS compat.
anytime.

Jan Engelhardt
--