Linux audio architecture discussion (ALSA, OSS, Pulse, Jack, etc) - Page 2

Sorry if I derailed the thread a bit there.

Merged that thread with this one and moved relevant posts from the Steam discussion.

Now that this thread has been merged, I now have a history of why we have these different layers and systems.

darkphoenix and tux, thanks for the discussion!

Well, I haven't re-read through the merge, but I'll just say that ALSA plus the OSS plug-in for ALSA have always worked very well for me. And this includes games running under Wine or Cedega or SDL and even Flash with the extrasound mod.

Pulseaudio, while I admire its goals of networked sound, has always caused more trouble than it's worth, and I typically won't install it or I'll uninstall it if I have to.

JACK, on the other hand, is a godsend. Sure, it's a bit more difficult to set up and you need a low-latency kernel to really appreciate it, but it is, by far, my favorite. Any application that is worth anything will have a direct sound output to JACK, also -- Mplayer, Amarok, etc.

So, that's just my $0.02 worth on Linux sound; and, apparently, Rgb has *finally* been given mod status. Kudos, my friend! Please don't delete my OT thread because I really do need to post music videos somewhere when I'm drunk. It is crucial to my sanity.

I gotta say I agree with Adobe on this one. This graph is the best representation of Linux audio I have ever seen.



http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2...he_jungle.html

The worst part is he's missing quite a few arrows. :P

Code doesn't solve organizational and political problems.

I apologize if I caused any offence but the reason why that graph was accurate is because we don't need all those boxes and arrows.

We can make do with 3, maybe 4 boxes: ALSA, OpenAL, JACK, and maybe, GStreamer (The initial simplicity of GStreamer is useful for media players and web browsers. It, however, is NOT an audio framework and is not suitable for advanced media creation).

4 boxes, all with only *one* arrow pointing to ALSA. That is the audio system Linux needs. And it's politics, not code, that's preventing us from having that system.