Re: ALSA or OSS?
Hendrik Boom wrote:
I've seen a lot of discussion about how to get alsa to work. The main
advice seems to be to disable OSS, which seems to sneak modules of its
own into the kernel. This leaves me wondering -- which sound system
*should* I use on my Debain sarge system? Is on a traditional part of
Linux, and the other an recent upstart? Or is one intended to replace
the other, and not quite there yet? I'd rather install the one that is
more reliable, or more linuxy, if that's a relevant concept.
-- hendrik
ALSA seems to be the direction everyone's heading, from what I've observed.
ALSA has some nice features that make it a suitable substrate for all
the Linux audio stuff.
It seems like most applications are written to use at least one of the
major sound APIs:
- ALSA
- aRts (KDE apps)
- ESD (Gnome apps, I think)
- OSS
- Jack
The nice thing is that you can have ALSA be the software that directly
controls your sound hardware, and still support all of those
applications that use the above-listed APIs. That's because ALSA offers
various compatibility wrappers / drivers for those other APIs.
AFAIK, ALSA is the only sound system list above that let programs
written for any of the other four sound systems to work ok.
On the other hand, ALSA still seems fairly complex to me to set up.
I.e., it's a heck of a lot more complicated than making this stuff work
right on Windows (Now I'll don my asbestos pajamas ;)
It also seems to me that by far, ALSA has the widest sound card/chip
support. When a new sound chip comes out, the only sound system I notice
getting a driver for it is ALSA (and Windows :).
I suggest going with ALSA. At least then, you can be pretty confident
that any problems you come across with program compatability can be
worked out.
Hope this helps,
Christian
--
Christian Convey
Computer Scientist,
Naval Undersea Warfare Center
Newport, RI
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