[SUMMARY] Esound versus Alsa versus GStreamer versus GNOME versus 2.6 versus ...

[Loïc Minier <lool+debian@via.ecp.fr>]

        Hi,

 Thanks to the input of various people on this list, it seems it isn't
 completely insane to try to switch to ALSA by default.  Some notes:

 - some hardware still isn't well supported with ALSA when it used to
   work with OSS

 - some hardware is only supported under ALSA

 - newer kernels which should ship with etch are only supporting ALSA

 - ALSA has OSS emulation

 - some advanced functionalities are only supported by ALSA (as some 5.1
   hardware)

 - statistics comparing the level of support between ALSA and OSS would
   be interesting

 - some applications don't deal with OSS correctly anymore

 - some applications still don't work in pure ALSA and require OSS or
   OSS emulation

 - Hurd and FreeBSD don't have ALSA


 From the above, my action plan has been updated to:
 - ship GStreamer with default audiosink alsasink and NEWS.Debian
 - ship a new GStreamer empty package gstreamer0.8-defaultaudiosink
   depending on the current preferred sound output, ie. ALSA on Linux
   and OSS on Hurd and BSD
 - request all GStreamer apps using an audiosink to update their deps to
   "gstreamer0.8-defaultaudiosink | gstreamer0.8-audiosink"
 - do not bother about esound has it will be either brought back in
   shape or superseded and is deactivated by default


 I might look into coordinating a wider sound transitions from OSS to
 ALSA, perhaps with KDE folks first, but I've not decided yet.

   Bye,

-- 
Loïc Minier <lool@dooz.org>