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

Alistair John Strachan
2006-01-03T14:41:27Z

On Tuesday 03 January 2006 14:38, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
> >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.

Andi made this point and I agree. I'm just making the point that people should
see it as exactly that -- a legacy compatibility layer. It should not be seen
as a "way out" for vendors looking to write generic DSP software.

The problem with using OSS compatibility, at least on this machine with ALSA
1.0.9, is that if you use it you automatically lose the software mixing
capabilities of ALSA, so it really is less than ideal.

--
Cheers,
Alistair.

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