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

[Rich Felker]

On Fri, May 04, 2007 at 05:36:15PM +0200, Zsolt Barat wrote:
> Rich Felker schrieb:
> >> audio devices but can't catch up with soundsystems we have nowadays, at
> >> least it didn't. it is like saying: "let's go back to a drivermodel for
> >> monochrome displays, because it's so simple and fits so well into the
> >> unix philosophy of device access"
> >> First of all, UNIX is dead and OSS is dead. We don't have to discuss it,
> > 
> > If you claim this then your opinion is utterly irrelevant to me.
> do you really think SCO-UNIX(UnixWare) will rule the world? in company
> with OSS?

You're living in the early 90's. UNIX is a trademark of the Open Group
and used to significy systems which are certified to conform to the
Single Unix Specification. Or, more practically, it refers either to
systems which roughly conform to it, or which otherwise follow Ken's
design.

> > 1. ALSA sucks. It's a horrible API.
> > 2. Stupid vendors (GNU/Linux included!) are always making their own
> > nonstandard crap instead of following open standards. This is yet
> > another example.
> > 3. Vendors (GNU/Linux included!) are full of NIH-syndrome and will not
> > accept others' APIs/designs even if they are good. They'd rather make
> > their own crap.
> you are repeating your opinion without arguments steadyli like a little
> child. ALSA has an nice clean API based on functions like other
> multimedia-libs.

s/nice clean/ and you're right. But the whole problem is that the OS
interface should NOT be a multimedia lib. Leave stuff like that to SDL
and don't force people who don't want that crap to use it. I'm so sick
of windows idiots coming over to linux and imposing the "everything is
a library" philosophy. GO BACK TO WINDOWS AND LEAVE US THE @#*$ ALONE!

Said more politely, "when in Rome, do as the Romans". That is, if
you're going to move to unix, learn the unix way to do things. Don't
try to make us adopt your bad customs from windows.

> OSS was never a standard, some unix-like systems just
> used it.
> in contrast OSS sucks and has a bad API.
> furtheron:
> 1. it doesn't support hardware-midi

Yes it does, and has since the beginning.

> 2. it doesn't support hardware-mixing of different audio-channels

Are you sure? It works fine last I checked provided the drivers
support it.

> 3. it doesn't support usb-audio devices, no bluetooth-audio
> 4. almost zero driver support for common hardware

3 and 4 have nothing to do with the API. You're repeating the same
fallacy. API!=drivers.

> > No it's not. And it will never be removed. Even Linux 1.0 syscalls are
> > still supported because they're needed to run applications. How would
> > you propose running ancient Linux binaryware games without OSS api in
> > the kernel?? (I don't want to run them but I'm sure plenty of people
> > do.)
> puh, ähm, "ancient Linux binaryware games"?? rich, c'mon! you are getting
> older or out of arguments.

No. Linux explicitly supports all binaries for all past versions of
Linux, on the same arch. In fact most of the ports to various cpu
archs were designed to mimic the exact syscall numbers, errno numbers,
etc. used by the dominant proprietary unix on that arch, for the
explicit purpose of supporting existing binaries from other systems.

IMO supporting binaryware is not a noble goal, but it's been part of
Linus's goal for Linux ever since waaaaay back and I don't see that
changing. As such, the interfaces used by this software need to be
maintained to meet that policy.

My argument for OSS is that it's superior and that it's the only
correct API. It has nothing to do with nasty binaryware. I was simply
pointing out a reason why removing OSS would break Linux policy and
why it won't happen.

Rich