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

Alistair John Strachan
2006-01-03T17:16:13Z

On Tuesday 03 January 2006 17:03, Olivier Galibert wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 04:29:21PM +0000, Alistair John Strachan wrote:
> > This has nothing to do with the kernel option CONFIG_SND_OSSEMUL which
> > Jan referred to, and to which I was responding. "aoss" is also not
> > compatible with every conceivable program.
>
> Especially not with plugins. Flashplayer anybody?

Konqueror manages to "wrap" plugins quite happily.. complain to whoever makes
your browser.

> > This is exactly why the OSS emulation option in ALSA is really a last
> > resort and should not be an excuse for people to ignore implementing ALSA
> > support directly. More so, it is very good justification for ditching
> > "everything OSS" as soon as possible, at least in new software.
>
> Actually the crappy state of OSS emulation is a good reason to ditch
> ALSA in its current implementation. As Linus reminded not so long
> ago, backwards compatibility is extremely important.

This argument is basically watered down with devfs, udev, sysfs, etc. which
all have exactly the same issues. Should a crippled OSS API be the way
forward for Linux? I think not.

> Also, not everybody wants to depend on a shared library. I find this
> "the alsa lib must be kept in lockstep with the kernel version" quite
> annoying. I'd rather not have the windows dll hell on linux, TYVM.
> Or in other words, the public API of a kernel interface should _NEVER_
> be a library only. At least OSS, with all its issues, had that right.

Okay, I agree it's not ideal. But if you want software mixing, and it's a
genuinely useful feature, you either have to go down the road of running some
crappy daemon like arts or esound, or just link against libasound and get it
for free. I know I'd rather not have mixing routines in my kernel, thanks.

--
Cheers,
Alistair.

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