On 10-Jan-99 at 09:24, Konstantinos Margaritis ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > > On Sun, 10 Jan 1999, Shaleh wrote: > > > > > > > My main interst in Linux operating system could be justified by the > > > desire to use some of the audio apps available for linux. > > > Hence the first question : how's the sound working on debian (and MIDI > > > if any). > > > > > > > Hope I am not wrong here. Debian (and other Linux dists) use the same > > Linux kernel. So as long as the kernel supports your sound, it works. > > Actually it is a little more complicated than that. Audio in Linux is not > that strong, and it is not yet IMHO, something that lures users to the > Linux world, and I have yet to hear someone that has running MIDI > running on a ppc-based linux. Not to underestimate the power that it > offers, but if you are interested in audio only, stick to MacOS, as it > offers some really powerful software.
Actually there are now some very nice audio drivers for Linux, not yet a standard part of the system but they work fine. The name for this set of drivers is ALSA, for "Advanced Linux Sound Architecture", and they provide full-duplex operation and a comprehensive set of mixing functions. The bad news is that these drivers are device-specific, and do not support the Mac sound system. Mac sound support for Linux is really only half-finished at this point: there is no support at all for digitizing sound input from a microphone or other source. It shouldn't be hard to do, since there is code for sound input in MkLinux that could be used as a model for how to drive the hardware, but no one has gotten around to doing it. I don't know how well (or even if) the MkLinux driver actually works. -Randy
