Re: [ANNOUNCE] OSS Proxy using CUSE

Adrian Bunk
2008-08-29T06:51:39Z

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 03:33:14AM +0200, Tejun Heo wrote:
> Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > Sorry for being destructive, but 6 years after ALSA went into the
> > kernel we are slightly approaching the point where all applications
> > support ALSA.
>
> Yeah, I have to agree it's a bit too late but the exclusion between OSS
> and more modern sound systems (be it ALSA or PA) still bugged me quite a
> bit. There always seems this one off app that wasn't quite there - be
> it mpg123 for whatever reason I still enjoy to use from time to time,

mpg123 supports ALSA since 1998 (sic).

> vmware which is a genuine pain in the ass to get working with LD_PRELOAD
> tricks (hopefully 6.5 will finally use ALSA but wait we're all going PA
> now...) or scorch-3D (and many other games) where aoss delivers horrible
> sound after playing for a while.

Scorched3D gives me sound with native ALSA.

Is your libSDL not linked with libasound?

>...
> Anyways, the thing is that unlike what was originally expected, dropping
> an major programming API doesn't really work too well even after six
> years of trying.

Good ALSA emulation was a hot topic a few years ago when popular
software like Flash and Skype didn't support ALSA, but the use
cases are becoming rare.

2 out of your 3 examples above were software where native ALSA works,
but your distributions seems to ship you a setup where you thought
OSS emulation was required.

Which distribution are you using whose makers seem to need
a big cluebat?

> Maybe because OSS is still kicking on other unices.

Which Unix with a big userbase uses OSS as primary sound system?

OSS-only applications tend to be older Linux-only applications.

Cross-platform applications either ship half a dozen different sound
drivers (including ALSA), or more commonly use some library that offers
one API no matter which sound system gets used.

>...
> Thanks.
> tejun

cu
Adrian

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