Re: debian vs linuxppc
On 10-Jan-99 at 09:24, Konstantinos Margaritis (kmargar@cc.uoa.gr) 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
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