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

Andi Kleen
2006-01-03T13:52:09Z

On Tuesday 03 January 2006 14:47, Alistair John Strachan 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.

As long as it works why is that a bad thing? OSS API works just fine
for most sound needs. If you want to do high end sound you can still
use ALSA.

> 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...

We can never get rid of it.
Linux doesn't break widely used application interfaces.

> 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.

-Andi