[MPlayer-dev-eng] [patch] prefer ALSA over OSS

[Rich Felker]

On Fri, May 04, 2007 at 12:58:33AM +0300, Uoti Urpala wrote:
> > Why is it necessary to make it impossible to use that direct kernel API
> > for all those where this "pretty advanced stuff" only causes problems
> > like it did for over a year for MPlayer?
> 
> Would it really have made sense for MPlayer to use a direct kernel
> interface, even if a stable one had existed? Would MPlayer just ignore
> the configurability of ALSA or reimplement it? Yes there were problems
> with early ALSA versions, but I don't think a kernel interface would
> have helped.

Don't complain about the possibility of MPlayer reimplementing things
when ALSA is already a reimplementation of plenty of cross-platform
audioserver/audiomixer apis like NAS which already existed and offered
better functionality (remote displays, etc.)

The official kernel sound API should be low-level, simple, and clean.
People who want shared-sound behavior like X offers shared/windowed
display should use NAS or similar. I'm not familiar with the pros/cons
of NAS relative to other sound server systems, but certainly it's the
right approach.

Rich