From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Peter Rasmussen Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 15:00:55 +0000 Subject: Support not in Linux, but in ALSA Message-Id: List-Id: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-sound@vger.kernel.org I have never before *had* to use an external driver to a sound card, but this weekend it appeared to me that I had to. I bought a [cheap] PCI sound card that I needed to be non-SB because it would interfere with the mobo-SBVibra that I have. It is a ForteMedia FM801 soundcard with no information on the chips, and failing attempts to use just about every driver in Linux, I had to look elsewhere and found that ALSA supports it, just like that. It even has OSS emulation so I could continue where I left with the SB driver. As ALSA is also GPL, does anyone here know why it hasn't been included into the Linux sound subsystem? It looks to me like there is duplicate work going on and not necessarily for the benefit of the general Linux user. OSS is a commercial company that releases their for profit drivers when they are old enough for them not to make any profit anymore (it seems), ergo presently the Linux sound system is getting the crums from OSS, when instead we could have a very nice looking sound system like ALSA put into the kernel. I know there is more than OSS sound drivers in Linux, but those are pretty scarce and the cards pretty expensive :-) Is it because of the history of OSS being the first to ever have Linux sound drivers, or is it the ALSA team that doesn't want to have their code included into Linux proper? This is my first encounter ever with ALSA, and I am just wondering if there are technical (ALSA doesn't really fit well into Linux proper), managerial (somebody has to do the work and nobody can) or political (the ALSA team doesn't like the Linux sound guys or vice versa) reasons for it? At least there has to have been some talk about it, but I have never heard it and I have not before seen ALSA mentioned a lot here? Peter