On Tue, 9 Jun 2009 23:09:45 -0400 Lee Revell <rlrev...@joe-job.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 9:18 PM, Jamie Lokier<ja...@shareable.org> wrote: > > But that doesn't explain why new kernels every few months behave so > > differently on my Intel HDA laptop. > > > > Because a patch that makes sound work on one laptop can break sound on > another laptop. Due to the design of HDA, the only way to guarantee > this won't happen is to regression test each patch on every single > make and model of PC on the market. > Which just tells there should be one driver per motherboard/laptop, and nothing will get broken. I.e. ALSA + kernle chose a wrong architecture, and specifically, kernel developers chose a _very_ _wrong_ approach declaring their disregard of stable binary API. > > Hopefully someone will produce laptops that use standard-ish USB sound > > internally sometime, like they already do with Bluetooth, Wifi and > > memory card readers. > > > > Those are not 100% standardized either. Hardware vendors like it this > way, it allows them to market the "value added" features of their > systems ;-) > > > Certainly I'll be testing my next laptop with distro CDs before buying > > it, if the next one comes with Intel HDA. In theory HDA is a good > > idea but it's a mess in practice. > > > > It's not even a good idea in theory. HDA was designed by Intel and > Microsoft. The HDA "spec" allows so much variation from one model to > the next that even on Windows, a vendor driver is usually needed to > make sound work. In theory the BIOS is supposed to tell a generic > driver how the audio is internally wired up on a given chipset. In > practice vendors skip this step because it's cheaper to put that info > in the .ini file of the vendor's Windows driver. Oh, so the info _does_ _exist_ in .ini file ?! And isn't the file a text one ? And if so, can't it just be extracted from Windows driver CD or from the manufacturer website, parsed, and the info used to make ALSA driver work ? > > It's almost as if HDA was designed to make sound support on non > Microsoft OSes as difficult as possible. But we all know Microsoft > would never do a thing like that ;-) > > Lee > Of course, Linux developers will never admit wrong approach - see the comments above. Not that Microsoft and Intel are innocent, but still ... --Sergei. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited royalty-free distribution of the report engine for externally facing server and web deployment. http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects _______________________________________________ Alsa-user mailing list Alsa-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user
