Boy, I hate to step into the middle of a good screaming match ;-) but it sounds to me like you're comparing apples and oranges. I run OSS at work and ALSA at home. At work I just want to listen to tunes and run a few different sound apps so OSS is fine. At home I'm doing multitrack recording with pro gear so I *have* to have JACK/ALSA. OSS doesn't handle my DSP2000 very well. In addition, almost all of the pro sound apps are being written for JACK. From a normal user's point of view OSS is probably smoother/easier/better. ALSA will eventually get there. I *do* think that the decision to include ALSA in the kernel is probably the beginning of the end for OSS (sorry).
Jan On Wed, 2004-02-25 at 05:20, Adam Tla/lka wrote: > On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 10:54:58PM +0100, Benno Senoner wrote: > > for those that are too lazy to browse the forums: > > > > http://www.4front-tech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25 > > ----- > > .... > > far more advanced ??? > > Ok I'd like see Ardour runnnig with multiple 24bit cards, all the > > switches for hardware monitoring etc under OSS. > nice but many people just haven't this hardware and want to use > normal PCI sound cards or even matherboard build in codecs > and mix many applications PCM sound together, use MIDI (software > emulated or not) without need of special configuring of aplications. > VirtualMixer, InputMultiplexer and SoftMidi in OSS does things transparently. > Mixing is done in kernel space so there is no delays and clicks > while some disk activity get processor as occurs in ALSA mixing in lib > case. Test xmms with ALSA and dma plugin and try to open big tar.gz > file. We got buffer underrun and app freezes. Sometimes I can only do > kill -9 ;-). It depends on buffer and period sizes. Sometimes app > freezes completly and sometimes you can rebufer by pressing pause/play > buttons. Is it nice and accepted?? While useing java app under aoss > it gopes to hell if buffer underrun occures. > > > > How about MIDI ? Where is OSS' midi router, is there an ossconnect > > utility ? (of course this a sarcastic comment :) ) > > > should be done in the future ;-). > > > > Only a fool would write a new linux audio app that does not use ALSA, > > especially apps that need MIDI. > > Ok jackd will probably become the "audio interface" of choice, but jackd > > using ALSA is more powerful than in the OSS case, > > (talking of pure PCM based apps, with PCM/MIDI apps the advantage is > > even more apparent). > I don't know jackd in details but generally I don't want any additional > suid daemon running in realtime priority in my system. Maybe if we need > to pump sound streams through the net we need a daemon. > But normally kernel should manage devices (real or emulated) > so there is a consistent way of accessing and using them. > I have many normal users which want to browse the net, display flash > pages, java applets or use RealPlayer. All of them use OSS ;-). > > > > > Not to mention that most distros once they will ship kernel 2.6 they > > will probably use ALSA as default because users > > are demanding multimedia features like MIDI, support of highend cards, > OSS supports more cards then ALSA > > > jackd support etc. > works with OSS too > > > So this will slowly but surely render OSS totally obsolete. I'm sorry > > but that's the truth that you cannot escape from. > Maybe but now functionalty of ALSA and just ease of use is not > so good to satisfy us. Mixing in lib is bad in my opinion and works nice > only if we have enough free CPU cycles. But we use many applications at > the same time compiling kernel, transfering data, looking in the > archives, doing backups etc. > > > Just like Micosoft's share on the desktop will drop considerably over > > time due to linux being more efficient and cheaper :-) > Not so fast :-(!! > > Regards > > -- > Adam Tla/lka mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ^v^ ^v^ ^v^ > System & Network Administration Group ~~~~~~ > Computer Center, Gdansk University of Technology, Poland > PGP public key: finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > SF.Net is sponsored by: Speed Start Your Linux Apps Now. > Build and deploy apps & Web services for Linux with > a free DVD software kit from IBM. Click Now! > http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1356&alloc_id=3438&op=click > _______________________________________________ > Alsa-devel mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-devel ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net is sponsored by: Speed Start Your Linux Apps Now. Build and deploy apps & Web services for Linux with a free DVD software kit from IBM. Click Now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1356&alloc_id=3438&op=click _______________________________________________ Alsa-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-devel
